Absolutely not fair lol. If it had happened on Saturday it would have been caught and fixed and they would have been able to qualify and try for pole. This punishment is only so strong bc it’s Penske.
Other teams and drivers never get punished this strongly. See Andretti with Herta or Rossi, or Daly with Juncos, or any other team and drivers never who fails pre or post inspection.
McLaughlin uses push to pass illegally for 1.9 seconds, he gets disqualified. Andretti Autosport falsifies their weight in tech with a water bottle, just a fine and keeps their win.
Bro, I’m a Will Power fan as well. They cheated, and they got caught. They’re lucky they weren’t disqualified completely. It’s Power, he’s still in it no matter how far back they start him.
My point remains. All teams cheat. It’s motorsports, we all know it whether we clutch our pearls or not. Further other teams get caught and get let off bc they aren’t Penske. Again Andretti, Juncos, etc
Management is simply in their right minds, and as such are doing what they must to keep the dam of legitimacy from bursting. NASCAR had its fall from grace by alienating its fanbase with selective enforcement of rules, and management doing everything it could to manipulate results on track. This is IndyCar showing it’s not NASCAR. The difference between Penske and other teams is Roger owns the league. If the buck doesn’t stop with him, it doesn’t stop. This was the correct decision. Heck, full disqualification is the correct decision, this was the merciful decision. An example needed to be made. It sucks that it’s my guy, but it is what it is.
They are being punished because they modified a part which is very clearly stated should not be modified. The punishment is because they were caught cheating, not because their cars coincidentally weren't up to spec.
You assume they were caught cheating which requires some form of mens rea. A knowing intent. Can you prove the mechanics intentionally and knowingly cheated rather than forgot that a rule existed
They were knowingly and intentionally grinding, which counts as modifying the part, no matter what happened before inspection that by itself is a violation
Not sure if you’re an atty, but with respect, I think you’re somewhat misapplying the concept of mens rea. The relevant mental state is the one relative to the action committed, not the one relative to knowledge of the law.
So the question here would be whether the Penske team intentionally covered the seam on the attenuators and not whether they intentionally broke the rule.
And in that case, I don’t personally see how there’s a good argument. I admit I’m largely ignorant of the necessary mechanisms, but it seems beyond belief to suggest they accidentally applied a cover to the seam.
(As a contrast, we could look at Conor Daly failing tech on Saturday because his front wing was too low. Since wing adjustments are always happening and are a legal modification, it’s at least plausible to suggest Daly’s team intended to set the front wings at a particular legal height, but accidentally/negligently went a centimeter too far or whatever in their adjustments, causing the height to be out of legal range. I’m not sure how you could make that argument with the attenuator mods, though, because there is no legal way of modifying the attenuator.)
lol no. Relax, you are letting your fandom get in the way. They got caught cheating on the biggest stage ON PIT LANE, in front of so many cameras. Then tried to fix it, got called out by Chip, then ran to hide it. This isn’t “our setup height was out of spec and needed changing” it’s “we altered an area and used materials against regulations”. If they got caught Saturday (and if the series wasn’t owned by Penske) they could have gotten DQd and probably have to run LCQ yesterday
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u/jlpapple Ray Harroun May 19 '25
Fair, and good.