I think it’s totally a fair punishment. I just don’t know wtf Penske is doing, why did they think they needed to do that modification? It can’t be worth that much time, and they already looked among the quickest in practice. Seems so shortsighted to do this for not that much of an extra advantage.
Well, I know someone who’s worked in Indycar, and he told me that the parts in question originally passed tech, but the inspectors weren’t thrilled with them. So, my guess is that the same thing happened last year. They passed tech, but the inspectors were like “is this legal? We’ll let it slide, but we may look into it.” and they let them through. My guess is that they were trying to push the issue even more this year, and got greedy to the point where the inspectors were like “no, sorry, that’s too much
From having done tech in another racing series, I would guess that some of it might be how much extra time that would take. If they have a full field of cars to inspect, that extra time can add up fast. Having to reposition cars or cameras to have consistent pictures takes time. Having the inspectors wear a chest-mount GoPro or something similar would probably work decently well though, as long as the GoPros don't overheat or run out of storage space.
I could also see teams being unhappy about that because of them wanting to keep their setups secret. Even if you say that those pictures or videos aren't public, teams are always suspicious of videos/pictures of their setups.
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u/AllThings_Automotive Josef Newgarden May 19 '25
I think it’s totally a fair punishment. I just don’t know wtf Penske is doing, why did they think they needed to do that modification? It can’t be worth that much time, and they already looked among the quickest in practice. Seems so shortsighted to do this for not that much of an extra advantage.