Josef Newgarden cheated.

Or somebody on his team or something. Whoever did it, the 33-year-old IndyCar driver took the brunt of it Friday.

Had this been a statement made last weekend as NASCAR occupied Alabama’s motorsports interests, it’d likely been buried at the middle of a hodge-podge of non-headline worthy news items. If you’re not cheatin’, you’re not tryin’, right? But NASCAR packed up and left, and this weekend, it’s IndyCar’s turn to turn left and right.

For what these IndyCar guys lack in fenders, they apparently make up for in moral compass.

To catch you up …

Team Penske was found this week to have manipulated, with a line of computer code, its push-to-pass system on March 10 in the season opening race in St. Petersburg, Florida. While the monetary fine, a mere $25,000, was modest by multi-multi-million-dollar race team standards, the other part wasn’t. Newgarden was stripped of the victory.

The last time IndyCar vacated a win involved Al Unser Jr. back in 1995, but he appealed it and had it reinstated. By contrast, while it was rare for a while in NASCAR, the stock car organization has stepped up punishment guidelines and vacated three wins since 2019.

But don’t get this twisted, Newgarden insists, he’s no liar. Cheater, maybe, albeit unknowingly. But not a liar.

“You can call me incompetent, call me an idiot … call me stupid, whatever you want to call me,” the two-time series champion said Friday, “but I’m not a liar.”

It goes without saying different sports are that: different. Things impermissible in other arenas become part of other’s landscape.

In the MLB, they’ve been called on the Washington, D.C., rug for cheating. And while the steroids era was a while ago, it still happens – 11 players have been suspended for performance enhancing drugs since 2020.

In the NHL, they fight.

In the NBA, they travel.

In the NFL, they Patriot.

And, college recruiting withstanding, since the NIL all-but legalized what was formerly known as cheating, Michigan took a page from the MLB’s Astros and stole signs.

But not in IndyCar, they’re high-octane choir boys. The honest Abe Lincolns of asphalt. Newgarden was asked how he’d win back the trust of his fellow competitors. Not teammates, competitors.

“I don’t know how you do that,” he said. “It’s important to state, I think it’s the truth, I don’t know that anybody’s going to believe what I’ve told you here today. That’s OK. I mean, I think it’s a crazy set of circumstances to try and just reason with.”

Sincere sounding enough, but can you imagine if Dale Earnhardt Sr. was asked a question like that? He’d laughed his mustache off.

But this is no laughing matter. Newgarden said his boss, team owner Roger Penske, was not happy. When you own the sport – and not in a metaphorical sense – you can’t really afford folks thinking your drivers are playing fast and loose with the rules.

But everyone affiliated chalked it up to an honest mistake, believe it or not. To be more specific, a copy-paste error, Team Penske president Tim Cindric told IndyStar.com.

Other drivers, not so much.

“I didn’t appreciate some of the quotes that were made. I’ll say that,” Graham Rahal said. “Like, I didn’t appreciate some of the excuses that were made because I don’t think that they’re valid excuses. …

“I kept reading the quotes, I just thought to myself, ‘Now you’re just digging yourself into a hole that’s just absolute BS.’ I just don’t appreciate that. In the spirit of sportsmanship, like screw up, you do something, fess up, move on with life.”

Newgarden, the only Southerner in the series born and raised around Nashville, certainly moved on Friday at Barber Motorsports Park outside Birmingham. After an early spin in the first practice, he logged the fastest time (1:06.7045) heading into today’s qualifying session for Sunday’s Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix (noon, NBC). He’s out to take his first pole since 2018, which was also the last time the 33-year-old won, the last of a trio of victories at the track. All non-vacated, of course.

Exactly one week after NASCAR dropped its green flag, these boys and their open-wheel machines will put on a show for this football-crazy state and the racing world. A cleaner show.

They’re not lily white, but they a shade of Benjamin Moore Sea Pearl compared to NASCAR’s rich tapestry woven into the sport’s fabric.

“I would say everybody’s always trying to push the limitations in motorsports in general,” Rahal said. “But I don’t think that cheating is as common in IndyCar as it may be in NASCAR. I really don’t.”

But Romain Grosjean, with a grin, added a disclaimer, “You don’t cheat until you’ve been caught cheating.”