INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — As the latest round of Team Penske cheating allegations swirled through Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the president of the IndyCar team stood outside the garage to address the illegal modifications discovered on two of its cars.
Lurking over Tim Cindric's shoulder was a random race fan wearing what appeared to be a Team Penske branded shirt.
It was not: Like Josef Newgarden and Will Power's cars for the Indianapolis 500, the shirt had been modified. It read: “Team Cheaters” with the Penske logo bar.
Perception isn't necessarily reality, but Roger Penske has a serious perception problem now that his team has been swept up in scandal for the second time in just over a year.
The first time, it was the discovery last April that the Penske drivers had access to the push-to-pass system when they should not have been able to use the extra horsepower boost. On Sunday, during the second day of qualifying for the 109th running of “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing," it was discovered that Newgarden and Power's cars had an illegally modified part.
They were disqualified from making a four-lap run, and IndyCar a day later hammered Team Penske: Newgarden, the two-time defending race winner, was dropped to 32nd in the field and Power was moved to last.
IndyCar stripped both cars of points earned in qualifying, fined both teams $100,000 and suspended the strategists for the remainder of the month. It means Cindric and team managing director Ron Ruzewski will miss the Indy 500 for a second consecutive year.
This is a nightmare for Penske, who owns the three-car team, IndyCar, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indy 500 — the race he values more than any other event in the world. Penske has a record 20 Indy 500 victories.
“What a shame this cloud will continue to hover over our great race until everything is fully resolved,” McLaren Racing boss Zak Brown told The Associated Press.
The penalties were decided by new IndyCar President Doug Boles, who in February was given the title in addition to his job as president of the speedway. He was the one to inform Penske, via phone call, before they were announced Monday.
Boles also tried to lessen Penske's role in what has transpired within the team.
“I don’t think Roger Penske understands some of the things that might be going on. I get the optics challenge, and it’s definitely something we should think about,” Boles said. "While (issues) roll up to Roger at the end of the day, I think they are certainly below him. There are things that happen that don’t ever get to Roger.
“I can tell you that Roger Penske would not condone this. In fact, I had a chance to talk to Roger, and I can tell that this is devastating to him,” Boles continued. “Nothing means more to Roger Penske than the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indianapolis 500. This is something that I think he’s going to have to address at some point in time.”
That's what rival teams have been saying since the commotion Sunday on pit lane, when the two Penske cars were pulled off the grid and returned to the garage moments before the fast 12 shootout.
Team Penske said it accepts the penalties and was "disappointed by the results and the impact it has on our organization. We will make further announcements later this week related to personnel for the upcoming Indianapolis 500.”
Boles is adamant the cars were legal in Saturday's inspection and he had heard nothing about the Penske cars potentially having an illegal modification until it all unfolded. Rivals are claiming otherwise, offering photos they shows the modifications as recently as last month's open test.
The AP and Indianapolis Star went to the IMS Museum on Monday and found Newgarden's 2024 winning car that is on display. It had the same illegal modification.
“The biggest problem I see is there's a bit of a theme going on here and it's just a bad look, right?” said six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon, who believes IndyCar needs an independent governing body without any Penske employees.
Dixon's boss, Chip Ganassi, was one of many who complained to IndyCar inspectors and Penske executives that the cars were illegal on Sunday. The next day, he remained disappointed in the drama that is now overshadowing the biggest race in the world, one that is sold out for the first time since 2016.
"All the teams in the sport have a responsibility to protect the integrity of the sport, none more than the Penske team," Ganassi told AP.
Newgarden is attempting to become the first driver to win the Indy 500 in three consecutive years, but no driver has won after starting on the last row. Power, meanwhile, is in a contract year and Team Penske has maintained it wouldn't begin discussions on an extension until after the 500. Asked last week about Power's future with the team, Cindric told AP: “Well, if he wins the 500, that would make for a much easier conversation.”
Now, Newgarden and Power are in deep holes despite having nothing to do with the situation.
Penske, who places tremendous value on his reputation and strong belief that “effort equals results,” is now having his integrity questioned. Boles and Penske Entertainment CEO Mark Miles had a Monday meeting with the rest of the owners that Brown described as contentious.
“I’m 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,” Brown told AP. “In racing you can sometimes have mechanics who make miscalculations and you can sometimes have manufacturing issues that can all lead to honest mistakes. 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."
Brown did not place blame on IndyCar technical director Kevin Blanch, who he said “does an excellent job.” But, he said there were questions about IndyCar’s ability to continue to run the series under the current set up.
“It’s clear IndyCar needs more depth and technical resources to examine and spot violations, flagrant or not,” Brown continued. “While I appreciate and support IndyCar’s position to move those two cars to the back of the field, there obviously remains a question mark regarding their compliance on Saturday.”
Brown said it was unfair that Jacob Abel of Dale Coyne Racing was bumped from the 33-car field.
“If it turns out this technical infringement was on their cars when they qualified Saturday, then it’s incredibly unfair that Jacob Abel and his team were bumped by non-compliant cars,” Brown said. “However, I have complete confidence in Roger Penske’s commitment to look at that situation and to ensure that any such wrongs are righted."
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
Santino Ferrucci, left, talks with Will Power, of Australia, as the drivers gather for a photo before the start of practice for the Indianapolis 500 auto race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Monday, May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
The winning car that Josef Newgarden drove to victory in the 2024 Indianapolis 500 is shown in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Monday, May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Josef Newgarden watches as his team tows his car following practice for the Indianapolis 500 auto race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Monday, May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
