Penske completes engineering and strategist line-ups

Josef Newgarden’s No. 2 Team Penske Chevy entry will feature consistency on its timing stand as the Tennessean’s trusted Indianapolis 500-winning race engineer Luke Mason and Indy-winning race strategist Jonathan Diuguid are staying in place for 2026.

It’s with the other two Penske cars where different names and faces will occupy those critical roles as Scott McLaughlin’s No. 3 Chevy has Raul Prados taking over for the upwardly promoted Ben Bretzman and the returning Tim Cindric as McLaughlin’s new race strategist.

Penske newcomer David Malukas completes the puzzle with James Schnabel as race engineer – who worked with him on loan from Penske last season at AJ Foyt Racing – on the No. 12 Chevy, and Team Penske No. 2 Travis Law as a first-time IndyCar race strategist, but who brings deep experience to the role from the Porsche Penske Motorsport sports car program.

“Ben Bretzman and Dave Faustino got promoted, shifted from their roles as race engineers,” Team Penske president Diuguid told RACER. “So Luke is staying race engineer for Josef; there was already some continuity there. And myself, I worked with Josef at the 2024 Indy 500, and sports car events, and I was positioned on that timing stand for all of the IndyCar races that I went to in the back half of the '25 season. So I already built some continuity and some trust with Josef and we had talked openly about me being on his car.

“And similarly, Travis is with David Malukas, who is starting newly with the team. Travis is new in that role, but has been quite successful on the sports car side. And so giving those guys an opportunity to grow together was what we wanted, and James Schnabel is going to stay with Malukas from his time at AJ Foyt, so there's some stability there as well.”