2024 NTT Indycar series - News, rumours and hijinx

[DoubleFart]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Hey Leela - Help Me Apply These Flame Decals I Got In My Cereal. Theyll Make The Ship Go Faster
And Whats Your Scientific Basis For Thinking That?
Duh, I'm 10?

[MonteCristo]

Two days of spring testing at Sebring next week with the full field. Then St Pete.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Not the best image but all I found....
ANDRETTI REVEALS 2024 PRIMARY LIVERIES

Andretti Global unveiled on Feb. 24 the primary liveries of its three drivers competing in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES this season.

The team pulled the covers from the No. 26 Gainbridge Honda driven by Colton Herta, the No. 27 AutoNation Honda driven by Kyle Kirkwood and the No. 28 Delaware Life Honda driven by team newcomer Marcus Ericsson.





Edit:
Found more

[SBan83]

Dan Wheldon documentary/movie coming on March 12 (on HBO Max if you're in the US). Looks like it'll be as much about Dan's career as his two young sons racing - something I didn't know but must be extra tense for their mother given what she already went through with losing Dan.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Dan Wheldon documentary/movie coming on March 12 (on HBO Max if you're in the US). Looks like it'll be as much about Dan's career as his two young sons racing - something I didn't know but must be extra tense for their mother given what she already went through with losing Dan.

I think both the sons are in the Andretti Junior driver program. I remember reading in the past month or so that the eldest of the two won the Skip Barber series last year and with it a tidy sum of scholarship money. I just found it looking for something else He was planning on doing the USF JUnior series this year which I dont know much about as a series. I do remember that his results seemed quite impressive and that he won his first race out of karts.

It was on one of the Indy websites so wont be hard to find. I'll look



Edit @SBan83 .... I found it, just searched Wheldon on the Indystar website and it was there in amongst other Dan Stuff.. Link below

https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/m ... 496985007/


What I dont recall seeing though is that if you scroll past that story and past the pic. of Sebastien (the name of the elder son) Wheldon in his Andretti race suit it mentions of the movie and says " The Lionheart':Documentary captures Dan Wheldon's one-of-a-kind legacy through the eyes of his sons

One thing I did notice is his race suit has Stars and Stripes flag and the Union Jack next to each other on the sleeve so he is at least keeping that UK aspect of the family legacy going..

I couldnt access that article about the movie though . Think I had done my quota of free articles. I notice it said access available if you disable adblockers but didnt work for me.

[MonteCristo]

Grid to expand further next year? As many as 29 cars?

https://racer.com/2024/03/29/growing-gr ... r-to-have/

First among them is the Abel Motorsports Indy NXT program, which made a one-off IndyCar appearance last May at the Indianapolis 500 with a chassis belonging to its driver RC Enerson. The team founded by Kentucky construction magnate Bill Abel has purchased a Dallara DW12 of its own, and the necessary pit equipment, to run a car at every race. In 2023 and again this May, Abel will use Chevrolet’s 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6 engine to power the No. 50 entry. It’s unclear whether continuing to use Chevy engines after Indy is an option.

The Pratt & Miller Motorsports team, which facilitates Chevrolet’s factory IMSA GTD Pro effort, is pursuing its first foray into IndyCar, but has not purchased a car, nor does it have an engine lease in place. And then there’s the multi-discipline PREMA Racing team from Italy, which is at the forefront of IndyCar’s potential growth.

Looking to IndyCar’s two engine manufacturers and their efforts to share the burden of supplying the season-long field, Chevy has 12 motor leases in play for the year and Honda has 15, which would point towards Team Chevy as the brand with the strongest likelihood of supporting any new teams next year. To get to 29 or 30 cars, Chevy would need to come closer to Honda’s lease number.

To that end, multiple sources tell RACER that Prema — which has a robust European junior open-wheel and sports car operation and has expanded into the U.S. through its running of the Iron Lynx Lamborghini IMSA GTP program — has secured a pair of engine leases from Chevy and is expected to announce a two-car IndyCar effort in the coming weeks.

Wowzers!

[Everso Biggyballies]

Arrow McLaren confirms Pourchaire for Barber Motorsports Park

Theo Pourchaire will continue to drive for Arrow McLaren at the upcoming round at Barber Motorsports Park, the team announced on Tuesday morning.

He did well on his Indycar debut coming in 11th I think it was, so a well deserved recall. He started 22nd and finished a respectable 11th while substituting for the injured David Malukas in the No. 6 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet.

Theo, a reserve and test driver for Sauber’s Formula 1 team, took honours as the biggest mover at Long Beach. He previously shared that he had been contracted “to drive for the next two races, to replace David” but further noted the round at Barber Motorsports Park was dependent on the health of Malukas. It became known over the weekend at Long Beach that Malukas still had pins in his wrist from the surgery.

McLaren were pretty happy with his performance....team principal Gavin Ward said:

“We dropped Theo in about as much in the deep end as he could be dropped,” Ward said.

“We had high hopes and I love the way he approached the weekend. He just got built up to it. He's completed every lap and just got better and better. Really, really impressive debut. …

“His enthusiasm is infectious. You could hear it on the radio. He was enjoying himself out there and that's fun. He's just been super happy to be in IndyCar and make the most of this opportunity, so that makes everybody smile.”

[MonteCristo]

Excellent.

[John]

https://www.indycar.com/News/2024/04/04 ... -Penalties

JoNew/McLaughlin DSQ-ed from St. Pete, Power docked points. Pato has now won the season opener.

[MonteCristo]

Whhhhhaaaaaaaat?! Ouch.

[Cheeveer]

Benetton 1994 vibes.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Penske sprung bad. Oh an oversight we forgot to remove the softare that allows restart use..... but different to Benetton '94 Cindric admits JoNew and ScottyMac chose to use it and admits that it' might 'have been known in advance. I reckon they got away real light.

Might have know about it in advance..... "does a bear shit in the woods?", "Is the pope a Catholic?" etc.

Racer.com

During last weekend’s event in Long Beach, the series found the three cars from Team Penske were able to bypass that software restriction and use push-to-pass at any time.

“During the Sunday, April 21 warmup session ahead of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, IndyCar discovered the team’s possible rules violation,” the series stated.

“An extensive review of data from the race on the streets of St. Petersburg revealed that Team Penske manipulated the overtake system so that the No. 2, 3 and 12 cars had the ability to use Push to Pass on starts and restarts. According to the IndyCar rulebook, use of overtake is not available during championship races until the car reaches the alternate start-finish line. It was determined that the No. 2 and the No. 3 gained a competitive advantage by using Push to Pass on restarts while the No. 12 did not. Additionally, all three entries have been fined $25,000 and will forfeit all prize money associated with the streets of St. Petersburg race.”

Beginning with this week’s race at Barber Motorsports Park, new technical inspection procedures will be in place to deter this violation.”

Team Penske issued a statement through president Tim Cindric after the matter was made public by the series and blamed a software oversight for the problem and subsequent advantage that was seen when Newgarden streaked away from the field at St. Petersburg to win by more than eight seconds.

“Unfortunately, the push-to-pass software was not removed as it should have been, following recently completed hybrid testing in the Team Penske Indy cars,” Cindric said. “This software allowed for push-to-pass to be deployed during restarts at the St. Petersburg Grand Prix race, when it should not have been permitted.”

Cindric also acknowledged Newgarden and McLaughlin chose to use the illegal access to push-to-pass power, which calls into question whether the unfair advantage was known to exist in advance.

https://racer.com/2024/04/24/team-pensk ... rg-winner/

[Matt]

This is a massive story. It probably shows how comparatively low in peoples' consciousness IndyCar has sleepwalked itself down to in the past few years that it's taken most of the 'mainstream' international motorsport sites this long to suddenly realise what this situation infers.

I mean, for any team to try this - if it is indeed something nefarious, which a lot of things point to it being - is mad. But for it to be Penske? Bloody hell. It wouldn't be just liberal interpretation of rules, either - it would be a case of sticking their fingers up and blatantly breaking them and trying to keep it hidden.

Think there's a lot to come out of the woodwork on this one. If the revelations about teams questioning Penske's P2P use last year and various suspicious videos from onboards in 2022 have any weight then this has the potential to be one of motorsport's biggest-ever scandals. The biggest, most successful team in IndyCar history, owned by the man who owns the entire series and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, might have just spent the last few years systematically cheating their way to success.

[Everso Biggyballies]

It indeed looks like Penske might have been doing this last year, and onr thing is for sure it seems like it is not something accidental.

A fully detailed account from "Racer" of how the issue came to light goes on to suggest that Penske were suspected by other teams last year of doingsomething suss. Chevy have distanced themselves from any involvement by highlighting the area where the programming isanarea of the teams responsibiility is a component controlled and programmed by the team not the engine supplier. However the data they see would highlight hints not all was as per the book.

It does suggest that Indycar have not been particularly diligent in checking post event data. They should have spotted anomalies prior to St Petes.

The part of that article that seems to incriminate and cover Penske in nasty brown stuff is here: I have omitted the part that specifically shows how it came to light through a freak accidental oversight by Indycar to not enable the P2P when it should have. The link to the full article follows this quote

....sources suggest, the CLU/MyLaps transponder is the one area of electronics in the P2P communications chain that has long been ripe for exploitation.

The wording in the series’ press release points to where it found the illegal activity: “Rule 14.19.15. An indicator to enable Push to Pass will be sent via CAN communication from the timing and scoring beacon on board the Car to the team data logger. This signal must be passed on to the ECU unmodified and uninterrupted during all Road and Street Course Events.”

The words “unmodified and uninterrupted” would seemingly explain how Team Penske bypassed IndyCar’s P2P on/off commands.

And with the previous note on how the series’ CAN message is encoded, it would suggest the team found a way to both interrupt IndyCar’s “off” signal and prevent it from being received by the ECU. But that doesn’t explain how the Penske drivers had functioning P2P during the warmup, all prior to IndyCar activating the system and sending the “on” signal to the ECUs. One expert suggested Penske found a way to spoof the “on” signal through the CLU/MyLaps units and tell the ECU to enable P2P.

With no “on” signal having been sent to the field for the first 10 minutes, and only the Penske cars making use of P2P when it was off, the expert’s theory could have merit.

The breach appears to have taken place in an area of the electronics chain that is controlled by the teams rather than the manufacturer or series.

For the sake of reinforcing access and roles, the CLU and MyLaps system is the domain of the teams, not the manufacturers. As such, and when asked for comment, a Chevy spokesperson shared the following with RACER: “The code that modifies the IndyCar push-to-pass MyLaps transponder signal resides on the CLU and is the responsibility of the team. Chevrolet has no input or responsibility for the software or operation of the CLU. The engine responds to the output of the CLU.”

In distancing itself from Team Penske, Chevy has further fortified the notion that it was not involved in the P2P trickery. But that does not completely absolve the brand from being accountable for the data it would have seen coming off of the Penske cars.

A standard practice for every engine technician is to download the data from their car’s ECU after each session, and in most cases, they pour over the information in an obsessive and investigative manner. They look for any irregularities in how their engine is performing, and with a countless number of data channels being captured, basic items like speed, engine RPM, and turbo boost are recorded and reviewed.

With the illegal ability for Penske’s driver to have P2P power before everyone else, the Penske ECUs would have documented the premature rise in boost and RPM, and shown the P2P button being successfully used when it should have been inoperable. Team Penske would have seen similar things on their side through the CLUs. Opportunities to self-report were seemingly present but not acted upon since St. Pete.

It’s also a common practice for manufacturers to pool the data from all of its cars and engines, and overlay the data where, at least at St. Pete, irregularities in Newgarden’s No. 2 Chevy and McLaughlin’s No. 3 Chevy should have been seen. This point was raised while asking the brand to comment, but it was not addressed in its answer, which leaves open the possibility the early spikes in power and RPM weren’t caught.

Separate from Team Chevy, Penske’s contravening of the rules should have been caught by IndyCar through a few avenues.

The series takes each team’s CLU data which also has basic engine data, after most sessions and definitely after each race. The series has live telemetry coming into race control whenever cars are on track, which delivers all of the important channels it would need to monitor for P2P use, and so on. It also has onboard videos to review, which would reveal a driver pressing the P2P button when it was meant to be disabled.

Through all of the means of information it intakes — both live and for review after the race — this could have been caught before Penske incriminated themselves through a random issue in Sunday’s morning warmup.

RACER also understands at least one team raised its concern regarding Penske drivers illegally using P2P in 2023 and went as far as sending the series onboard video clips of what it considered abnormal button use for IndyCar to review.

Give full credit to IndyCar president Jay Frye, who oversees the operations side of the series. He took aim at his boss’s team, did exactly what he should have done, and treated Team Penske no differently than any other entrant. This is how a sport should work.

At the same time, the series also missed an ongoing, multi-event infraction that could have been found without having to look beyond the basic data it collects. Relying on good faith that all teams will play within the rules cannot be allowed to continue.

The main question left to answer is how hard IndyCar wants to look into Team Penske’s recent history and comb through the detailed data it has from the three cars to check whether the illegal P2P practices started before 2024.

This is a black eye for Roger Penske, Tim Cindric, Josef Newgarden, Scott McLaughlin and the series. Decisions were made to bypass the P2P rules and there were far too many people who plug into the cars and see the data to claim it was a simple software mistake.

RACER was told in the hours after the penalties were announced that IndyCar has sent a patch to be installed that would prevent future bypassing of P2P rules through exploiting the CLU/MyLaps loggers. This shouldn’t happen again. But was it an isolated incident?

For those who care about the integrity of the sport, let’s hope Frye’s team looks back a few years to find out, and that no interference from Penske is received. What a sad day for IndyCar.

The full article is here: https://racer.com/2024/04/24/how-team-p ... the-limit/


Frankly Indycar have to pore over every detail of Penske data, if only to validate it has not been happening long term. They owe it to the other teams.

[Vassago]

Luca Ghiotto will drive for Coyne at Barber and IMS. Well, that came out of nowhere.

[MonteCristo]

Nice. Good luck to him.