Roger Penske on Scott McLaughlin's win at Barber: 'It doesn't overshadow our penalty'

LEEDS, Ala. – Through three all-hands meetings this week – at its Mooresville, N.C. race shop, ahead of practice Friday, and on Saturday morning with team owner Roger Penske present – Team Penske closed ranks amid paddock-wide speculation over its ethics, honesty and attention to detail.

And with Scott McLaughlin “in his Retribution Era,” according to his strategist and race engineer Ben Bretzman, the defending race winner at Barber Motorsports Park went back-to-back, spearheading a 1-2 Team Penske finish with Will Power to cap an emotionally charged five days for the drivers, team and series.

“Obviously, it was really important for us to stay focused this weekend so we could give (Penske) and everyone that supports us some good news this week,” team president Tim Cindric told IndyStar in the wake of McLaughlin’s victory that seemed certain … until it wasn’t and then was again. “Hopefully today is a step toward turning the page.”

‘Roger’s got to clean his house up’: IndyCar owners meet with Roger Penske over scandal

For Penske – who held court in his motorhome steps from pitlane with representatives of the nine other IndyCar teams Saturday afternoon to briefly discuss and apologize for an alleged coding error that gave his three cars elevated availability of push-to-pass at last month’s season opener – IndyCar’s largest on-track scandal in recent memory is not yet in the rearview mirror.

“This was a big win for our team,” he told IndyStar in a brief text exchange Sunday following McLaughlin’s victory. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t overshadow our penalty, which we deserved.”

But before Penske held an open forum for IndyCar’s nine other teams to vent their frustrations, question his prior knowledge and clarify their confusion, Penske assured his race team that it had his full support, too. As he juggled recusing himself from IndyCar president Jay Frye’s investigation and stomaching his team’s pair of disqualifications and $75,000 in fines, Penske gathered his team’s at-track employees Saturday morning shortly after touching down at the track.

“Roger stood up and said, ‘I know how we got here. We win together, and we lose together. We’ll be stronger and work extra hard and show everybody that it has nothing to do with all the BS. We’re still the team to beat,’” Team Penske IndyCar managing director Ron Ruzewski told IndyStar post-race. “It all probably became a bigger distraction once we got (to the track), because we showed up here, and you see your peers and everybody has their opinions.”

As the team’s three drivers, Cindric and others had either insinuated or bluntly stated since Thursday, Ruzewski said post-race that Team Penske’s focus came from an internal belief that no one in the program had done anything nefarious, purposeful or deceptive. Team Penske’s rivals spent the week saying otherwise. How could a team with IndyCar’s most decorated resume, brightest engineering minds, most meticulous drivers and sharpest management misunderstand the rules? Miss glaring data anomalies? Be so sloppy?

How could this be anything but a hastily put together, widespread coverup?

“I think there was a lot of uneasiness for a few days, even for myself, because I didn’t even know any of this was legitimately happening until Tuesday. That’s what everyone doesn’t understand, but it’s the truth,” Bretzman told IndyStar. “Even me that runs a car didn’t know what was happening.

“You see people say things in the media when they have a podium to stand on that don’t actually know what’s happening, and that’s very frustrating, so you can get an uneasy feeling about that. But once qualifying came through for us, I think everyone took a step back and realized, ‘It’s all going to be OK.’ It made it a much more normal race weekend. It was like, ‘We can do this.’”

Though McLaughlin put on a strong showing a year ago, leading 24 laps and out-dueling polesitter Romain Grosjean in a classic battle for his fourth career IndyCar victory, there was uncertainty how Penske would fare this weekend – even before Tuesday. None of their three cars were among the 15 that tested at the track in mid-March. Two of its front-running rivals – Arrow McLaren and Chip Ganassi Racing – did, along with midfield contenders Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and Meyer Shank Racing.

Penske had data from technical alliance partner AJ Foyt Racing, though that program is still in its infancy.

Then, just days ago, Penske was on interrogation-esque phone calls with his drivers to try and get to the bottom of the mess – which he first learned of from Frye and led to a quick call to Cindric to get to the bottom of Team Penske’s culpability and just how long it had been running afoul of the rules.

The results were curious – a coding change in August at the start of intensive hybrid testing had been erroneously copied-and-pasted onto 2024 season software. Meanwhile, Newgarden claimed his entire No. 2 car team – which includes Cindric as strategist – had misunderstood a rule change meant only for the March exhibition at The Thermal Club.

Virtually everyone IndyStar has spoken to in recent days flatly doesn’t believe something wasn’t caught in the team’s St. Pete debrief.

But the team is resolute.

“Honestly, I hate to say it, but I don’t think it bothered anybody, because everyone knew what happened and that nothing was done mischievously. There weren’t any hidden agendas,” Ruzewski told IndyStar. “So in everybody here’s minds, this weekend was about, ‘Let’s just move forward and show everybody it wasn’t intentional.'

“Some people will believe you, and some aren’t – and we can’t control that. All we can is being 100% forthcoming.”

As Penske noted, Sunday isn't the end of this story. McLaughlin’s win won’t silence the doubters. For some, nothing will. At least publicly, concerns over Penske’s perceived conflict of interest – with ownership of the series and one of its most high-profile teams – remains negligible. He’s known, though, to be a ruthless competitor, too, who’s spared no expense in business and sport to turn his love for racing borne out of a visit to the 1951 Indianapolis 500 into a powerhouse team.

His first star driver, Mark Donohue, titled his mid-'70s book "The Unfair Advantage." Penske helped spearhead ‘The Beast’ at the 1994 500 that took the month by storm and dominated race day in a way few have in recent decades. But three of his race teams – IMSA, NASCAR and now IndyCar – have lost race wins or been caught within the last year overstepping the rules. Though Power and others continue to assert Team Penske’s innocence – “I feel bad for Roger, 'cause our team doesn’t even go in the gray area. We don’t cheat,” the driver said Friday – their record has been stained of late.

If this weekend is any evidence, the questions will only continue. Winning will heal a lot of wounds, but reputational scars take longer to fade.

“Unfortunately, sometimes, these things show people’s true colors, but it is what it is. Haters are always going to hate, and they’re always going to try to bring you down,” Ruzewski said. “One thing we won’t do is let this tear us down, and I think we showed that today.

“Every experience, whether it’s this, or a loose bolt on a car, a strategy call or mixing up ordering lunch, every experience, you learn from, and that’s what makes the best teams ‘the best teams.’ It’s about learning from those experiences, developing processes and moving forward.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Scott McLaughlin, Team Penske win at Barber, but questions remain