Moral imperative

 You can see it in one photograph, this unforgiving culture that demands much to deliver much. Punch up a graphic of the starting grid for Sunday's 109th running of the Indianapolis 500, and there they are, 33 drivers in the firesuits. Thirty-one of them are saying cheese for the camera.

The two who aren't?

Grim as death, both of them.

Josef Newgarden, your back-to-back 500 winner, looks at the camera from the middle of the last row, his lips a tight slash. Next to him, 2018 winner Will Power stares with wide, almost shocked eyes, as if he still can't quite believe he's starting dead last.

These are not happy men, clearly. They are men who've grown to expect more, to need more, than just making the field, or perhaps even finishing second.

They are Roger Penske's men.

Who are starting 32nd and 33rd because Roger Penske's demanding, well-oiled machine suddenly threw a rod Sunday afternoon, spewing gouts of smoke like some exhausted '82 Chevette. Penske's boys rolled the well-oiled rides of Newgarden and Power in for pre-Fast Six tech inspection -- and both cars failed.

Something about an illegal attenuator. Oops.

And just like that, Newgarden and Power were out of the pole chase. Just like that, they were sent to the last row, as if they were a couple of scruffy rooks trying to make the field for Lugnuts-N-More Racing and not, you know, Josef Newgarden and Will Power.

Beside their entries, this humiliating notation: No Time.

It was the second time in a year the Penske culture suffered the embarrassment of looking like Just Another Race Team; the first happened last year at St. Petersburg, where Scott McLaughlin and Newgarden were stripped of their 1-2 finish when it was discovered Team Penske had violated the race's push-to-pass protocols.

The motorsports world being the conspiracy hotbed it is, this got the Grassy Knoll Brigade all revved up, suspecting Roger Penske -- owner of the entire IndyCar series -- was trying to rig his own game. And now?

Now he gets caught cheating at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, for the Indianapolis 500, the biggest motorsports event in the world. And both of which Penske also owns.

Which meant a moral imperative didn't just beckon, it screamed from the rooftops. And Penske, the Captain of this rigidly tight ship, was merciless in his response.

At mid-afternoon yesterday Team Penske sent out a release announcing that it was cleaning its house at the very top, dismissing team president Tim Cindric, managing director Ron Ruzewski and general manager Kyle Moyer. Cindric was the big name of the three; he'd been with Penske for more than two decades and, as president, was almost as much the face of the organization as Penske himself.

Now he's gone, proving once again that everyone is expendable in corporate America. Especially when you work for a guy who runs not only a corporation, but virtually the entire industry.

"Nothing is more important than the integrity of our sport and our race teams," Penske said in the release, stating what the moral imperative compelled him to say. "We have had organizational failures during the last two years, and we had to make necessary changes. I apologize to our fans, our partners and our organization for letting them down."

Onto Sunday now, when the last Penske entry -- McLaughlin -- rolls off from the outside of Row 3. If he wins, it'll make for a hell of a story. And of course something more than that, all of this being what it is.

The conspiracy crowd, you figure, will have a field day. Oh, you bet.