Penske sticks with Indy 500 staff for Detroit

Team Penske will race at this weekend’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix with the same temporary additions to the timing stands of its three NTT IndyCar Series entries that were used on Sunday for the Indianapolis 500.

A Penske representative confirmed to RACER that with the short turnaround between Indy and Detroit – and the combined IndyCar and IMSA event set for the streets of Detroit where most of the stand-in personnel hail from the Porsche Penske Motorsport IMSA GTP program – the Nos. 2, 3, and 12 Chevys will continue with identical crew structures on the three timing stands.

• No. 2 car, Josef Newgarden: Raul Prados (race engineer)/Luke Mason (race strategist)
• No. 3 car, Scott McLaughlin: Malcolm Finch (race engineer)/Ben Bretzman (race strategist)
• No. 12 car, Will Power: David Faustino (race engineer)/Jonathan Diuguid (race strategist)

Owing to the busy nature of the weekend, Team Penske’s full-time IndyCar race engineers (Mason, Bretzman, and Faustino) are expected to perform those duties on Friday and Saturday, and in the case of Mason and Bretzman, move to the race strategist roles for the 100-lap race on Sunday where their IMSA counterparts (Prados, Diuguid) are free following Saturday’s 100-minute IMSA race.

On a related topic, Team Penske also confirmed it has not identified the full-time replacements for the fired trio of former team president Tim Cindric, former managing director Ron Ruzewski, and former team manager Kyle Moyer.