IndyCar responds amid alleged evidence of Penske running modified accentuator last year

IndyCar has responded to allegations that Team Penske had been running modified accentuators on its cars as early as last year’s Indianapolis 500.

Penske has been caught in a storm after two of its cars were forced to miss the Top 12 qualifying shootout for the Indy 500 on Sunday for failing technical inspections.

The team has been found guilty of filling and smoothing the seams on the rear accentuator, a part that is standard for all teams and hence cannot be modified.

Although IndyCar has taken action against the team by sending the cars of Josef Newgarden and Will Power to the back of the grid for the race and imposing hefty fines against the squad, the controversy is refusing to die down.

In a press conference with IndyCar president Doug Boles on Monday, it was claimed that teams had been aware of Penske modifying a spec part for some time - and they had even alerted the series about the same.

Videos also emerged from the IMS museum on social media, showing Newgarden’s race-winning car from last year seemingly having a modified accentuator with its seams smoothed out.

In response, Boles made it clear that IndyCar didn’t spot any illegal changes to Newgarden and Power’s car prior to Sunday.

He also encouraged teams to proactively inform the series whenever they have reason to believe that a car is not conforming with the technical regulations.

“The first way to respond to that it was found on Sunday. Those are the facts,” he explained. “The facts I know is it was found on Sunday. This penalty is based on what happened on Sunday.

“I have had teams tell me since last night that they have photos of cars - not just Penske cars, other cars - with things on cars that are not within the rules and I've asked them why no one has sent anything to me or ever said anything to me about that? So I have never heard that.

“I know that's around the paddock, but I have never heard the news. If somebody had told me that was the case, I would have gone to Rocket (IndyCar technical director Kevin Blanch) and talked to Rocket and made sure we paid attention to that. 

“In my conversations with Rocket, Rocket has said that he does hear from teams occasionally about a lot of things, but he did not specifically say that he heard something about this particular issue.

“Again, I'm just going on the facts that I have. The facts that I have is I know that yesterday the car was not conforming to our rules. I can only make a decision on what I know.

“I can only encourage people if there are photos of cars with things illegal on them, they need to tell me. Then I can address it.

“But I can't address something that happened last year when I wasn't even in this job, and I can't address something that happened on Saturday if nobody had the guts to come and tell me it was going on Saturday.”

While Newgarden and Power will now take the start from 32nd and 33rd on the grid respectively, Scott McLaughlin will line up on 10th of the grid - the same position he qualified in.

That’s because after impounding the rear accentuator from McLaughlin’s car, it was discovered that no part had been altered against the rules.

As such, the penalties only apply to the other two Penske cars of Newgarden and Power.