One crash, two cars pulled - Penske's qualifying disaster explained

Team Penske has explained why two of its cars weren't allowed to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 on a day when its third car had already crashed in practice and been ruled out.

Penske came into qualifying as the favourite, particularly with last year's pole winner Scott McLaughlin, whose car had looked the best of the team's three in qualifying trim.

But McLaughlin crashed heavily at Turn 2, leaving the #2 of Josef Newgarden and the #12 of Will Power to attempt to advance from the Fast 12 segment to the Fast Six pole position shootout.

However, both cars were pulled out of line after they were seen being worked on.

Only wing angle changes and tyre pressure adjustments are allowed in the line on pitlane before qualifying, but pictures showed the rear wing being taken off Newgarden's car and tools including what appeared to be an angle grinder being applied to Power's.

The #12 car had reportedly cleared inspection, whereas IndyCar had pointed out a part of the attenuator - the upright assembly which holds up the rear wing - had been sealed and blended where there is a seam. Once it knew the officials didn't like the #2 car, Penske elected to pull the cars out of line.

Penske began to work on the cars as it believed they might be given permission to, but that wasn't the case.

"So essentially the #12 car actually passed inspection and as the #2 car went through inspection it was pointed out that basically the officials didn't like what you saw in television there," Team Penske's president of the IndyCar team, Tim Cindric, told Fox.

"There was a blending there on the attenuator and we decided, 'Look, the #12 car, let's go look at that' and the #12 car was the same way.

"So there was really no reason to run the #12 car knowing that it was like the #2 car, and they didn't like the #2 car.

"I in fact went back and looked at the #3 car from this morning and it didn't have that, so there's a bit of a randomness internally there that we need to sort out but it's a shame we didn't give our guys a chance to go for it."

Expanding on his answer, Cindric added "when we asked if we could modify that or change that before we ran, it was understood at least initially that we might be able to do that", but admitted if he was one of Penske's competitors "I'd have the same argument that you're only allowed to change certain things once you pass inspection, wing angles, tyre pressures and so forth".

"At the end of the day we didn't do it right," he said.

The part or area of the car in question here can be seen in the tweet above, where a gap is visible between the orange bodywork and the carbonfibre. There is no sealant here and this is not a Penske car.

Asked for further explanation, Cindric said: "There's a seam, there's just a seam on the attenuator, so we'd fill that seam on evidently some of our attenuators and others we hadn't, and honestly I think it's an arbitrary thing.

"When I looked at #3 car that crashed and it wasn't like those. So once I knew that the #2 car and the #12 car were the same in qualifying line there was no use to put our cars at risk."

IndyCar technical director Kevin Blanch gave a statement but was not asked any follow-up questions.

He merely stated: "There was a body fit violation on that rear attenuator so as quick as this process happens, we ran them through tech, we got everybody in line and then right near the end or prior to qualifying they decided that they would just pull out of line."

There has been some debate about whether a competitor pointed out the sealed area and/or Penske working on its cars in the line, but this has not yet been addressed by Penske or IndyCar.