Newgarden: No smoking gun to explain Penske’s Indy 500 struggles

Penske has 18 wins in the Memorial Day Weekend classic, but last year the four-car team lined up 17^th, 21^st, 26^th and 32^nd  on the 11 x 3 grid.

And while all four cars showed good pace in the race, culminating in the now-departed Simon Pagenaud coming through the field to finish third, Roger Penske’s team’s qualifying struggles had left the drivers with too much to do in the 200-lap race.

Make your voice heard in our Global Fan IndyCar Survey: CLICK HERE 

Asked if the team had nailed down what had caused its dearth of pace during four-lap qualifying around the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Newgarden replied, “I don't know if you can. For me it's going to be a dollop of this, a dollop of that. It's a million areas, right? I don't think we can pin our hat on one thing.

“There was no smoking gun. There usually isn't. With Indianapolis… we had to look at everything and hopefully it turns out to be 10 to 20 little things we found. We put all those together and it makes the difference for us.

“We certainly aren't looking at one thing from last year that we felt like was deficient and we think that's 80 or 90 percent of the problem… That wasn't the case. We looked at every area, we certainly saw some deficiencies in certain parts of the car. There were things found, but I don't think it's one thing or another. It's going to be multiple things.”

He went on to say the lack of speed “wasn't from a lack of effort. Everyone did a tremendous job of trying to find solutions that we needed at the Speedway. Unfortunately they just didn't pan out.

“There's really only one thing to do, and that's just to keep going. I mean, us at Team Penske, there's no other choice than to just keep going, keep finding answers, keep working hard. That's what we've done again this off-season. I think we've done everything in our power to try to put our best foot forward.

“There's no doubt when we show up to the Speedway, there's nothing acceptable except excellence. That's just how it is when you're at Team Penske. That's what we expect of ourselves. We're working towards that. I think we have found good things to put forward. We'll just have to wait and see if it's enough. We're going to keep working till we get to race day.”

Although Newgarden wasn’t prepared to say who will replace his former race engineer Gavin Ward who has moved to Arrow McLaren SP, two Motorsport.com sources say it will be Pratt & Miller’s former IndyCar program manager Eric Leichtle. This is one of several engineering changes as the team goes from four IndyCar entries down to three – Newgarden, Will Power and Scott McLaughlin.

In 2022, the latter will have Pagenaud’s former and longstanding race engineer Ben Bretzman, while his erstwhile engineer Jonathan Diuguid will focus on Penske’s sportscar operations, including the World Endurance Championship LMP2 campaign this year, and the LMDh Porsche in 2023.

However, Newgarden said the engineering shuffle at Penske would have noticeable benefits.

“I think the core nucleus of our team is solid,” he said. “It doesn't matter who you put where, there's so much strength within the team that it can always pull through and be what you need.

“I'm excited in one way because a new group in some respects brings heightened energy and alertness… At times, when you've been with a group a little while, you can start to get lazy. I'm talking about myself. Everyone kind of knows the routine, we don't have to really check in as much, we don't have to be as critical.

“When you have new people onboard, you've got to make sure you're really educating everyone, constantly affirming how you feel about things. I feel like you might not miss as much. In that way it could be invigorating for us to have a little change-up.”