In a highly emotional news conference, Josef Newgarden both accepted full blame for actions that led to his IndyCar victory in the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg being disqualified while also steadfastly defending his commitment to being truthful and claiming he had no idea he was doing something wrong.
“The facts are extremely clear,” Newgarden said as his voice quavered numerous times in the Barber Motorsports Park media center Friday morning ahead of NTT IndyCar Series practice (3:40 p.m. ET, Peacock). “There’s no doubt we were in breach of the rules at St. Pete. I used push to pass at an unauthorized time on two different restarts.
“Those are the rules and we did not adhere to them. What’s really important about that, too, is there’s only one person sitting in the car. It’s just me. It’s my responsibility to know the rules and regulations at all points and make sure I get that right with that regard, I failed my team miserably. I failed completely to get that right. You can’t make a mistake like that at this level in that situation. There’s no room for it. I don’t want to hide from that. It’s an embarrassing situation to have to go through. It’s demoralizing in a lot of ways. There’s nothing I can say that changes the fact of what happened. It’s pretty clear. I think the facts are most important that’s what really matters. I also think the truth is really important. There can be space for both those things.”
Newgarden’s March 10 victory in the season opener was nullified Wednesday (with Pato O’Ward declared the new winner) after IndyCar determined that Newgarden deployed push to pass illegally. Under the rules, IndyCar drivers are restricted from using what’s called “the overtake button” (which provides a boost of 50-60 horsepower) at the start of the race and on restart laps.
Teammate Scott McLaughlin also was disqualified for briefly using the push to pass button on a restart at St. Pete. Penske driver Will Power was docked 10 points for having access to the overtake but not using it. Newgarden said
IndyCar inadvertently discovered the infraction during last Sunday’s warmup for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach when the push to pass system stopped working but remained active on the Penske cars.
Team Penske has maintained since the penalty was announced Wednesday that their trio of drivers had access to push to pass because of an honest mistake and oversight. Team president Tim Cindric told the Indy Star that it was a coding error.
Newgarden confirmed he “purposely was hitting the button. The tough part is the intent. I don’t think that intent matters at this point. The facts are, when are you allowed to use push to pass? The rules state you’re not allowed to use it until the alt start/finish line, and I (did). It’s very easy to tell when you’re using the button. I know when I pushed the button. It’s not anything I would try to hide behind. It’s also very obvious when you’re using the button. It comes up on my dash, there’s onboard cameras, people see the telemetry updates.
“It’s nothing you’re trying to hide from. I’m not trying to hide from it. I know exactly when I pushed the button. I feel it every time. It’s a very obvious thing.”
The No. 2 Dallara-Chevrolet driver said he thought pushing the button on restarts had become legal, noting that IndyCar altered its rules for the March 24 exhibition race at The Thermal Club (which took place two weeks after St. Pete).
During the $1 Million Challenge, teams were afforded a larger allotment of push to pass for use at any time (and in qualifying), and Newgarden said his team thought the rule applied for the full season. He reaffirmed that McLaughlin (who said he pressed the button for less than 2 seconds out of habit on a restart) and Power had no knowledge the overtake would work on restarts.
“On the 2 car, somehow, some way, we convinced ourselves that there was a rule change to restarts specifically with overtake usage,” he said. “You say, ‘How do you come up with this? It’s never happened before.’ The only place that this got introduced was with the Thermal exhibition race. It’s the only time, in my time in IndyCar, where we’ve actually had a legitimate legal change of the push to pass system. Where it’s going to be operable at a time other than at the alt start/finish line. It was going to be able to be used in qualifying, too. There was a lot of discussion about it.
“We genuinely believed and convinced ourselves that at St. Pete, the rule was now you can use it immediately on restarts, you don’t have to wait till the alt start/finish line. It’s going to be available immediately. I even wanted the team to remind me of this so I didn’t forget. Whenever you get something new as a driver, it’s like, ‘Please remind me.’ It’s easy for me to forget this stuff with everything going on inside the car. I specifically asked for that, too. We all knew about that.
“The craziest part of the story is, the software issue that no one knew about just perpetuated that belief even further. Then you go through St. Pete, you go through Thermal, where it’s an actual change and everybody’s using it. Then you go to Long Beach, and it’s still in the car.
“The first time that any of us hear about this software issue or mistake is the warmup (in Long Beach). Even the crazier part of that is, even when you learn about the software issue that no one knew about, and it was fixed, I still believed the procedural difference on restarts was applied for Long Beach. I tried to do the exact same thing leading the race at Long Beach. I even pushed the button. I came over the radio, ‘Hey, guys, the overtake isn’t working correctly.’ I said it throughout the whole first lap because it wasn’t working right.”
“The truth is, somehow we got that mixed up, it got entangled with the mistake. It’s created some ridiculously unbelievable storyline now. The facts are that I used it illegally, I wasn’t allowed to. I can’t change that. Whatever I say going forward will not change those facts. It kills me that it doesn’t. I wish I could go back in time and somehow reverse all this, but I can’t. Today I want to be held accountable for what I did and the actions I took, and I want to tell people the truth.”
Newgarden fought off tears numerous times in his 30-minute media availability. After the soul-baring session, he felt better but also admitted his answers could strain credulity for many.
“I didn’t have anything prepared today,” the Nashville, Tennessee, resident said. “I didn’t want to have anything prepared. I didn’t want to rehearse anything. Of course, I thought about it. How could you not? I’ve been thinking about this nonstop for 48 hours. I woke up at 3 a.m. this morning, I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I was like, ‘Man I got to be rested to go speak to (the news media.’ It’s so easy to just tell the truth. I wanted to do that today. I’ve left a little bit of room for this weekend. I’ve tried to study and do my normal deal, so I’m hoping I’m going to be ready to go.
“I don’t know that anybody’s going to believe what I’ve told you here today. That’s OK. I think it’s a crazy set of circumstances to try and just reason with. Certainly not going to come from words. It’s just going to take repetitive action. That’s all you can do is just repetitive action and hopefully, I can stand on that in the future. However long that takes, how many years, if I’m given the time, I’ll just try to earn (respect) through action.”
When asked by NBCSports.com freelance writer Bruce Martin how this would affect him entering the 108th Indy 500 next month as the defending winner, Newgarden had to pause to compose himself. “Well, I’m still happy,” he said “Look, I got the best job in the world (tearing up). I’m excited. I’m still excited. I’m excited for this weekend. It should be good.”
The two-time IndyCar champion also deeply apologized “to fans, teammates, partners, anybody I’ve raced against in our community. I’ve worked very hard in my career to maintain those standards, and I’ve fallen very short of that in this respect.”
Newgarden said he approved of the massive penalty and didn’t want the win (which would have been the 30th of his career) on his resume and added that he was “interrogated” by team owner Roger Penske, who “didn’t take it well.”
Newgarden also met Thursday with IndyCar president Jay Frye.
“He asked me to come see him; I think he was just being nice,” Newgarden said. “I think he wanted to be a friend. I was like, ‘Jay, this is what happened. The sad thing about it was no one did this on purpose.’ That’s the saddest thing. Even me telling Jay the story, I could tell looking at him that even he was having a hard time believing it.
“What are you going to do? If this guy has a hard time believing it, how is anybody going to believe it? I can’t affect that. So after today, I’m not going to concern myself with it because I just can’t control it.”
But the Team Penske star also defended his honor from those who said he pushed the overtake button knowingly in violation of the rules.
“The tricky thing about this whole situation is I didn’t know I did anything wrong until Monday after Long Beach,” Newgarden said as his voice cracked again with emotion. “It’s the first time I heard that I broke rules. I knew getting to this part was going to be difficult for me.
“You guys can call me every name in the book. You can call me incompetent, call me an idiot, call me stupid, whatever you want to call me. But I’m not a liar.
“The story that I know, which is the truth, is almost too convenient to be believable. I didn’t leave St. Pete thinking we pulled something over on somebody. I didn’t know that we did something wrong until this week. Then I’ve had to wrestle with the how do you explain a situation to people? I know what happened. I know why it happened. I don’t think it’s very believable, even when I try to tell the story back. I don’t think any of us believe it will be believable to somebody.
“But it’s the truth.”