Under fire for illegally modifying attenuators on two of their Indianapolis 500 entries during qualifying over the weekend, Team Penske on Wednesday announced its fired IndyCar president Tim Cindric, general manager Kyle Moyer and managing director Ron Ruzewski.

Team owner Roger Penske announced the statement-sending move Wednesday just four days before May 25's Greatest Spectacle in Racing that will see Penske's Josef Newgarden, the event's reigning two-time champion, and Will Power start from 32nd and 33rd, respectively, for violations involving filled seams on the attenuator — a critical safety component designed to absorb crash impacts.

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"Team Penske will have further announcements this week related to personnel and replacements for this weekend’s Indianapolis 500," the Mooresville, N.C., team said in a statement Wednesday.

This week's major Indy 500 penalties — which includes suspension of the team strategists for both cars through the event, fines of $100,000 for each entry, forfeiting all qualifying points and losing their pit position selections on top of starting from the final row — marks the second consecutive year Team Penske has faced siginificant penalties.

Last year, Newgarden was involved in a push-to-pass scandal in last year's series opener at St. Petersburg where he crossed the finish line first, but ultimately fail tech.

These series of events have sparked outraged within the IndyCar paddock largely because of the conflict of interest that stems from Roger Penske owning the NTT INDYCAR SERIES and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway while operating his three-car IndyCar team.

Penske, who hopes to clean up his organization's reputation, on Wednesday said "nothing is more important than the integrity of our sport and our race teams."

"We have had organizational failures during the last two years, and we had to make necessary changes," Penske said. "I apologize to our fans, our partners and our organization for letting them down.'"

Veteran racer Graham Rahal couldn't hide his frustrations during the WIBC Tales From The Track event on May 19, calling Team Penske's repeated violations "a pattern."

“I don't say this alone, I'll say this for every other owner, I'll say this for every other driver, there’s a pattern now, there’s a pattern," Rahal said. "They did it last year, and they got caught. They did it again this year, they got caught. But apparently, if you look back at the photos from last year's race-winning car, it had the same modifications, so it was illegal. That's a concern, right? There's a pattern to this.”

CEO of Arrow McLaren Racing Zak Brown told the Associated Press that he's been "very concerned, as are my fellow team owners, to find that Team Penske has been found with a multi-car major technical infringement for the second time in two seasons."

"In racing you can sometimes have mechanics who make miscalculations and you can sometimes have manufacturing issues that can all lead to honest mistakes," Brown said. "I don’t believe that’s what happened here or last year, which raises questions over the integrity of the decision-making within that team.”

Newgarden's race-winning 2024 Indy 500 machine has even been found with similarly tampered attenuators in the rear-end of the No. 2 machine that's on display at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Musuem.

Veteran journalist Marshall Pruett, who by the way has an engineering background, posted a revealing video on X saying "I can't say if the illegally blended attenuator was on the 2024 Indy 500 race-winning car when it crossed the finish line," it's still "on the winning car currently on display in the IMS Museum."

When one X user commented on Pruett's revealing post pleading for 2024 runner-up Pato O'Ward to be awarded the victory, the veteran reporter made his case why that shouldn't be the case.

"No. I wouldn’t want that for him. He wouldn’t want that," Pruett replied on X. "And this race is too important to us to overturn a victory from a year ago because this was potentially missed."

Further digging into the attenuator drama and whether or not Newgarden's team modified the rear-end of the car in their second straight Indy 500 win, Pruett found archived photos reflecting the same shiny, dark-black seam he saw at the IMS Museum.

Found this on the series' photo site from the 2024 #Indy500. Had to pull up the exposure to see the darkened rear and it shows the blended attenuator. Third photo is the attenuator on the car in the IMS Museum, with a similar exposure change to reveal the shiny dark black seam… pic.twitter.com/sLahd6QJ2E

— Marshall Pruett (@marshallpruett) May 19, 2025