INDIANAPOLIS – The haters, doubters and naysayers will never truly cease, though that is perhaps the magic of this legendary racing team. Before the fines, suspensions, disqualifications and never-ending barrage of questions and accusations, Will Power sat before a media center full of reporters and called his team’s shot.

Without question, he promised, Team Penske would rise again to take pole for the Indianapolis 500 after a five-year dry spell, during which the team’s four-lap speed had fallen off as Chip Ganassi Racing, Arrow McLaren, AJ Foyt Racing and others sped past. Penske's impending pole was such a foregone conclusion, Power joked four weeks ago at Long Beach that the scriptwriters for IndyCar’s docuseries ‘100 Days to Indy’ had already written it.

In recent weeks, up against questions of the team’s ethics in the wake of Team Penske’s push-to-pass scandal that lost Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin podium finishes at St. Pete and, to some, tarnished the reputation of Team Penske and Roger Penske’s series leadership, Power doubled down. Missing team president Tim Cindric, managing director Ron Ruzewski and two of its sharpest engineers in Luke Mason and Robbie Atkinson, Power, the 2018 500 winner, all but called his team’s shot on a front row lockout.

The feat had only happened once before in 1988, with a Team Penske trio that similarly included the driver of the Yellow Submarine, a one-time victor and the defending winner of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

“I think to do it with these two boys, and also in Roger’s house, I think we’re all really happy for Roger,” said McLaughlin, whose 234.220 mph four-lap average that places him on pole for the 108^th running of the 500 eclipsed Alex Palou’s 2023 for a fastest 500 pole performance. “It’s been a tough few years, at least with the car speed. Josef winning last year was fantastic, but a lot of the objectives were to bring faster cars, and I think we certainly have.

“So proud of the effort.

Front row lockout closes Penske's chapter of qualifying woes

In the four 500s since Simon Pagenaud throttled the field, leading 115 laps from pole to his first Indy 500 victory, Team Penske had entered 14 cars into the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, and not once had a Roger Penske car started inside the top-10. Half of those 14 entries started outside the top-20 – four of them 25^th or worse – and one (Power in 2021) risked missing the field altogether after falling into that year’s Last Chance Qualifier action.

That’s not to say Team Penske hadn’t had the tools to fight their way to the front. Pagenaud finished a distant 3^rd to ex-Penske teammate Helio Castroneves during the latter’s historic fourth win in 2021, and Newgarden executed a last-lap pass of defending winner Marcus Ericsson a year ago to take the checkered flag, chug the milk and etch himself into 500 lore.

But Penske’s speed deficit had been impossible to miss. Even in a year in which Chevy placed eight cars on the first four rows of cars – including three in the top-4 – the best Penske could muster was 12^th.

“It’s just been a nonstop effort ever since (2019). We hadn’t turned the page, and I think this is the first time we’ve turned the page,” said Newgarden, who will start on the outside of Row 1 for next Sunday’s 500 after a Fast 6 run of 233.808 mph that briefly sat on provisional pole before Power snatched the honors out of his grasp (233.917 mph). “We’ve got the speed back, and it’s a testament to the entire group.”

As Power first revealed to IndyStar on Saturday, one of the newfound advantages comes in IndyCar’s increased regulation of cars’ pushrods over the offseason. As the two-time series champ explained, Team Penske had long been using a new, state-of-the-art pushrod that proved to be safer and more durable, but came with the addition of aerodynamic drag. Other teams, he claimed, were using parts dating back to the debut of the DW12 chassis and the current engine formula in 2012. The handicap, Power said, may have been as much as 0.5 mph.

With that, too, came the launch of Team Penske’s technical alliance with AJ Foyt Racing and its wizard engineer Michael Cannon, who helped power Scott Dixon to his recent back-to-back 500 poles in 2021-22 and who was on-staff at Chip Ganassi Racing for Marcus Ericsson’s 500 victory in 2022. Though the trio of Penske drivers were hesitant Saturday to grant much credit to Cannon and the Foyt organization – while teams and drivers across the paddock vehemently claim played a massive role in Penske’s qualifying leap in 2024 – Power and McLaughlin admitted after the team’s domination of Sunday’s Fast 12 and Fast 6 that the partnership had, indeed, helped “confirm” a couple things.

In an exclusive sit-down with IndyStar shortly before he headed back to his homebase in Detroit, the team’s owner was far more effusive in his thanks for the assistance from his longtime friend and rival on the racetrack.

“You saw where (Ferrucci) was today. (AJ Foyt Racing) has learned a lot, and they’ve done a lot better on the road courses, and we’ve learned some stuff from them, too,” Penske said. “It sure is a team effort.

“Our cars had been good, but as everyone does here in the garage area, you’re always looking at what other people are doing, and we had the chance to be able to partner. It’s obviously a good thing for Chevy, and AJ is one of my great, old friends in this sport. That we could help them, too, was certainly a payoff for us.”

'This validates the kind of team we are'

But no matter all the data, gearbox designs, setup sheets and elbow grease in the world, 500 qualifying comes down to execution under pressure. As other competitors exhibited communication failures, slippery cars and engine worries, Team Penske thrived. As has been referenced all week, Penske’s stable of engineers, strategists, mechanics and team managers overflows with talent.

“We have a deep bench,” Penske boasted inside his RP1 mobile headquarters Sunday evening. “Obviously, Tim (Cindric), Ron (Ruzewski), Luke (Mason) and Robbie (Atkinson) weren’t here, but I give them a lot of credit. They got us to where we are, and it’s unfortunate they couldn’t be here to be able to be part of the celebration. But from a team perspective, we’ve worked hard.”

Penske’s handling of his pair of suspended team officials (Cindric and Ruzewski) and engineers (Mason and Atkinson) continues to rub competitors the wrong way. Though Penske barred them from team communications during on-track activity and the grounds for the three weekends the series competes at IMS, there are some who assert Cindric took in the Indy sports scene in some way this past week in his hometown.

True or not, Penske notably did not bar any of the four from pre- or post-sessions meetings and strategy sessions, though Newgarden contends his two interactions with his longtime strategist Cindric have included brief phone exchanges about his crew’s disastrous Sonsio Grand Prix and about how to acquire his pace car related to his 2023 500 victory. Combined with Cindric’s attendance at Porsche Penske Motorsport’s IMSA GTP victory at Laguna Seca a week ago, including a sizable presence on the timing stand, Penske’s detractors say the penalties – unenforceable by IndyCar president Jay Frye, having been levied by the team – are lax at best and insulting at worst.

What’s quite likely true, too, is those competitors of Penske will not ever be truly satisfied with answers the team’s drivers and team members gave in the days following IndyCar’s historic penalties that allegedly stemmed from a combination of misunderstood rules, mistakes in coding and software management, a lack of thoroughness in the team’s St. Pete data review and an overarching mismanagement of the IndyCar program for a team that has built its reputation on an almost unhealthy level of attention to detail.

And so for some, seeing the smattering of yellow, white, black and red stretched across the front row for Sunday’s procession of pageantry, parade laps and sprint to the green flag will remain unsettling. Penske and his cabinet of trusted confidants that include Penske Corp. president Bud Denker and executive vice president of marketing and business development Jonathan Gibson, remain eyes ahead. The trio, along with Penske Entertainment Corp. president Mark Miles, sat side-by-side on the wall at the end of pitlane Sunday early evening as they traded concealed whispers, fist pumps and, eventually trades of backslaps, high-fives and effusive screams of joy.

“Come on! Come on, come on!” Denker yelled as he burst out of his seat on pitlane the moment McLaughlin’s record-setting 500 pole run popped up on the video board across the track. Seconds later, Penske was on a golf cart, making his way to Victory Lane, but not before signing a pair of autographs.

Along the way, fans showered Penske with words of congratulations and support – ‘Awesome job, man’ – and when he arrived at the sea of bright-yellow, a police officer parted a path through the crowd, then put his hand on the small of Penske’s back and muttered, “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

When he finally found McLaughlin, The Captain said, simply: “Next week. Next week.”

The work, of course is not finished. Inside Penske’s empire, it never is.

“Let’s talk about 2024. Some people doubted the quality of our team and the integrity of this group,” Penske told IndyStar, as if speaking directly through the recorder and into a paddock-wide speakerphone.

“I think this validates the kind of team we are. We’re winners.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: 'We're winners': Roger Penske praises team's work, Foyt partnership for Indy 500 qualifying speed