Penske Racing Caught Cheating Again, Raising Doubts About Josef Newgarden’s 2024 Indy 500 Win

The specter of a cheating scandal hung like a raincloud over Penske Racing and the IndyCar paddock just over a year ago when Josef Newgarden was stripped of his Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg victory over the team manipulating spec parts to gain a push to pass button advantage that his competition did not have. This week, following two Penske cars—including Newgarden’s—being pulled from Indy 500 qualifying over an illegal aerodynamic modification to a spec part, and it has set the IndyCar grid ablaze with rumor and accusation. It’s very cut and dry in the rulebook that the Penske team cheated over the weekend, but it’s becoming obvious that this was not a one-time cheat. 

When Newgarden and Will Power rolled out to the grid for qualifying on Sunday, it was brought to the attention of IndyCar that neither car was compliant with the rulebook by competitive team boss Chip Ganassi. The rear “attenuator” crash structure of both cars, a spec part and can’t be modified, had some kind of filler applied to its seams, presumably for slight aerodynamic advantage. Both Power and Newgarden were relegated to the back of the field for this Sunday’s 109th Indy 500 running, Penske paid $200,000 in fines and won’t ever do it again, and that’s the end of the story, right? 

Sitting on display in the newly-revamped Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum (above) is the car Newgarden used to win last year’s Indy 500, his second in a row. It would be pretty easy for someone to go check if last year’s car had the same illegal modification, right? 

The car Newgarden won with last year in the IMS museum appears to have modified parts as well. pic.twitter.com/QnoUwQU2aw

— Jenna Fryer (@JennaFryer) May 19, 2025

Photos of both sides of the attenuator on Josef Newgarden’s 2024 Indy 500-winning car inside the IMS Museum.

Clearly has the seam between the parts of the attenuator filled and smoothed.

Not aware of any rule change that would’ve allowed that to have been legal a year ago. pic.twitter.com/KRk2dpQATg

— Nathan Brown (@By_NathanBrown) May 19, 2025

Monday #Indy500 practice report (short) and Penske penalty and IndyCar operations governance (long). @RACERHQ pic.twitter.com/mHYLcK334h

— Marshall Pruett (@marshallpruett) May 19, 2025

Yeah, last year’s car was seemingly modified in a similarly illegal way to this year’s car, which was disqualified as presented during Sunday’s qualifying session. Penske Racing has allegedly been bending and outright breaking the rules for at least the last two seasons, while all of the other ten teams on the grid seem to have followed the rulebook to the letter and no cheating scandals have been attributed to any of them in the same period. Even the cheaty Penske cars passed initial tech inspection, it wasn’t until another team owner brought it up to race control that anything was done about it. What does this say about Penske Racing? What does this say about IndyCar tech inspection? What does this say about all of the other teams? 

The racer in me says that if Penske had an illegal part on at least one of their cars, and they all but swept the month of May at Indy in 2024, why the heck aren’t all of the other teams following suit? Even if the aero advantage is minuscule, it isn’t something getting flagged by the tech team, and has passed over and over again. Racer reporting indicates someone (who won’t go on record) claims to have brought the issue to race control in the past and was ignored. In my book that’s tacit approval by the series to run the illegal part and anyone who wasn’t doing it was putting themselves at a disadvantage. 

Similarly, I think Chip Ganassi screwed himself over on this one, playing his cards too out in the open. If Chip really wants to win another Indy 500 against the clearly quite fast Penske team, the smart move is to sit on this information until just before the green flag falls on Sunday’s race. Why blow up Penske’s spot during top 12 qualifying? Why not give them just enough rope to tie into a noose and get the whole team disqualified from the event altogether and sweep your fastest competition out of the way? 

Racing is ruthless, and if you aren’t giving yourself every advantage, you aren’t really racing. Everyone on the grid today, and most of the fans in the stands, will admit that the rules bending committed by some drivers and teams in days gone by are some of the greatest stories in motorsport. Everyone loves Smokey Yunick’s extremely cheaty machines, and Penske Racing itself was built—with the help of the legendary driver/engineer Mark Donohue—on the principles of gaining whatever unfair advantage you can find. I don’t fault Newgarden or his team for deploying an illegal car to win the Indy 500 in 2024, and because it passed pre-race and post-race tech, I don’t think anything should be stripped away from him as a result, despite my personal fan alliance to race runner-up Patricio O’Ward. I do fault the tech team for not knowing the rulebook well enough to see an illegal car when one is presented to them. 

Look, cheating is going to happen. It’s a part of the bedrock of racing, and probably always should be. It’s up to the series officials to investigate, and it’s up to the teams to cover it up. Which, ultimately, is why it probably isn’t a great idea for one man to own the series, the speedway, and a team which races there.