LEEDS, Ala. – The investigation into Team Penske’s manipulation of push-to-pass via an improper line of code embedded in the software of its three IndyCar entries has been completed and closed, series president Jay Frye told a small group of media Friday at Barber Motorsports Park, with no further penalties expected.

That review, Frye and Penske Entertainment Corp. president and CEO Mark Miles said, included an extensive data dive into all three of Team Penske’s cars – digging all the way back to the start of the 2023 campaign. A review included an extra look at the final three road and street races of 2023, which came after Team Penske president Tim Cindric said his team’s engineers manipulated code on its test chassis ahead of the launch of manufacturer hybrid testing back in August at Sebring.

“We think Job No. 1 for the series is to enforce the rues and uphold the integrity of the sport, and nothing will keep us from doing that as best we can,” Miles said. “I think in this case, a thorough investigation was conducted. Jay and his team and a whole lot of engineers looked into a whole lot of data and everything they could, going back to every weekend in 2023 – where we found nothing.

“We reached the conclusions that we reached and enforced the penalties we thought were appropriate.”

How IndyCar made decisions on fines, penalties

Those penalties, including the first disqualified race-winner sine 1995, saw St. Pete victor Josef Newgarden and 3rd-place finisher Scott McLaughlin knocked off the podium, losing a combined 88 points from their title charges. Penske teammate Will Power, who unlike the former two, didn’t use overtake on starts and restarts at St. Pete, was docked 10 points. All three teams were fined $25,000 and docked them all any related prize winnings from the season-opener.

Among the questions the IndyCar executives answered in the 14-minute scrum minutes before Practice 1 of this weekend’s on-track activities, was about the thought process that led to Power’s penalty. Though he gained no on-track advantage – Newgarden hit the button three times for a total of 9 seconds, while McLaughlin did so once for 1.9 seconds of boost – his car was out of technical specs.

IndyCar has a drivers' and entrants' championship and could take different points numbers from either, depending on the penalty situation – as sometimes happens in NASCAR – and Miles said that was discussed. Ultimately, they landed on a fair middle ground that best addressed team and driver culpability. McLaughlin since has professed that his hit of the button was accidental and not something he realized until Cindric brought it up in explaining the team’s trouble on Tuesday. Newgarden said Friday he believed there was a rule change and expected the button to work.

“We did what we thought were appropriate and significant penalties, based on breaches of our rules and that’s what the role is,” Miles said. “I hope fans know that the sanctioning body acted appropriately.”

Though IndyCar and Team Penske are owned by Roger Penske, with Penske Corp. as their parent company, Miles emphasized that both are cordoned off as separate arms of the larger business – meaning that the fine money paid by Team Penske isn’t part of the same individual company ledger before it’s paid to Penske Entertainment.

'It's the truth': Newgarden knows explanation for push to pass violation isn't believable

How IndyCar aims to prevent similar software breaches

Frye said that moving forward, the series has mandated that the CLUs (central logger unit) that communicate in each car with the related ECUs will now be locked by the series, making them inaccessible to team engineers to prevent software tampering. While lacking specifics, Frye said that a couple other firewalls will be put in place inside race control “to help highlight things like this to be more obvious,” though he didn’t go into any specifics.

When asked about the ways in which race control fell short and could’ve caught this anomaly at St. Pete, or even in the weeks afterwards during typical race data reviews, Frye had little explanation. He did say that no teams had filed any formal complaints in the weeks between St. Pete and Long Beach that tipped IndyCar officials off.

“We didn’t catch it at St. Pete, and that’s on us, so we have to go back and evaluate what we did or didn’t do at this point,” he said. “There’s many different mechanisms and millions of data points that come off these cars – millions.

“So again, we think by what we’re doing with the CLU and locking them going forward, it’ll prevent this from happening in the future. We deal with 27 really, really good race teams and lots of really smart people. In IndyCar, we’ve got a lot of really smart people, too, and our job is to make sure of the integrity of the sport and the races. We’re confident and comfortable with what we’re doing going forward that will not allow this to happen again.”

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'It's very hard to police intent'

As Newgarden noted Friday morning, and Cindric acknowledged in a call with IndyStar on Thursday, increasingly vocal portions of the IndyCar paddock don't see the feasibility of Team Penske’s winding story as to how it accidently broke the rules.

When asked Friday whether he, too, questioned the intent of Cindric and the engineers in his charge, Frye didn’t offer an opinion either way.

How it happened: Tim Cindric explains how Team Penske ran afoul of IndyCar rules

“It’s very hard to police or evaluate intent, so in the end, it’s about data, and again, it’s on us,” Frye said. “We didn’t catch it at St. Pete, but we have mechanisms in place that we think should prevent that from happening in the future.

“Our job is to enforce the rules and do it with independence and with good judgement, based on the data. That’s our focus.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar president Frye, CEO Miles: Team Penske investigation complete