The Pit Window by Mike Silver

In an emotional press conference at Barber Motorsports Park this morning, Josef Newgarden gave his side of the story about the illegal use of Push to Pass at St. Pete..

Newgarden began by explaining why he had not issued a statement like his teammates did.

I didn’t want to put out a statement or try and
do an interview over the phone or something like that. I
thought it was really important to get in front of everybody
and have an opportunity to chat.”

He wnet on to say that it was his responsibility to not make mistakes in the car.

“For me, what’s really important about that, too, is there’s
only one person sitting in the car. It’s just me. So that
responsibility and the use of the push to pass in the correct
manner falls completely on 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. A complete failure on my side to get that right.
It’s my job as the leader of the 2 car to not make mistakes
like that. You cannot make a mistake at this level in that
situation. There’s no room for it. There’s no room for that
type of mistake anywhere, certainly not at the top level of
motorsports. I don’t want to hide from that.
For me, it’s an embarrassing situation to have to go
through, to see what’s transpired. It’s demoralizing in a lot
of ways. There’s nothing that I can say that changes the
fact of what happened. I mean, it’s pretty clear.”

In a sometimes quivering voice, often sounded sounding frustrated and bothered by the vents of the week, Newgarden accepted the consequences of what happened and is ready to move on.

“But it doesn’t matter what the intent was… if you broke a rule, you have to suffer the consequences,” he said.

Newgarden doesn’t believe there was any intent on the team’s part to gain an advantage.

“It actually baffled me that anyone could be doing this… there was no checks and balances system in place (to prevent this,)” he explained.

Newgarden issued an apology.

“If there’s anything I wanted to come say, too, I want to
deeply apologize to our fans, our partners, my teammates,
the competitors that I race against, anybody that’s in our
community. I’ve worked my entire career to hold myself to
an incredibly high standard. Clearly I’ve fallen very short of
that in this respect.
Once again, I mean, I can’t overstate, it’s a difficult thing to
wrestle with. It’s a very embarrassing process to go
through. I hope we can find a way forward after this.
That’s really all you can do after the fact.
I wanted to come here and state that.”

Notes

I felt Newgarden sounded very sincere and contrite. You could tell that this incident has truly bothered him.

I am still puzzled how an elite team like Penske, which always presents a buttoned-up image, can display such ignorance of the nrules, or think there was a rule change without some form of communication from Indycar.

Indycar PR dropped the ball by not making this conference available for streaming to the general public. I’ve received several messages from people wanting to know where they could watch it. This issueis very important to the fans, and the series should have realized that.