In a land that’s spawned perhaps more than its fair share of conspiracy theories – take your pick from JFK, the moon landings, 9/11 and what Donald Trump’s hair is made from – Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 produced a new one: It was fixed to allow track and series owner Roger Penske’s driver Josef Newgarden to win.
To countenance that belief, you’d have to completely discredit why Penske is in this sport and what the multi-billionaire gets out of it. He first came to the Indy 500 as a fan with his father in 1951, and saw Lee Wallard lead 159 of the 200 laps to win by almost two minutes. And he came to the 107th edition, 72 years later, to see a good and fair race as he did then (although the winning margin was a tad closer).
Sure, Penske wears a lot of hats – $3.1 billion can buy you a lot of them – and he freely admits: “I took my track owner hat off and became a car owner there [for] the last lap.”
But he stood down from his passion for calling strategy on the pitbox to avoid a conflict of interest, separating himself from any competitive contact with his team or officials. TV showed where he was in those closing laps, stood atop his Pagoda building with the best view in the house, along with his son Greg and right-hand man Bud Denker.
To suggest he instructed race control to allow his car to win… that’s just nuts. He carries a huge amount of heft in IndyCar circles, more than anyone else, but I simply don’t believe that would ever happen. And why would he want it to?
I know he’s set a target of 20 BorgWarner trophies for his team, but not at all costs. He gets a buzz out of beating his old friend Chip Ganassi, but by fair means and not foul.
“I had nothing to do with it, obviously,” he affirmed of the final red flag/restart decision. “We have a group that is certainly the officials of the track, and to me, we've said this before, we want to see a chequered flag, not a yellow flag [to end the race].”
Source: Autosport