Penske driver Josef Newgarden isn’t going to let anyone — not even his own teammates — come between him and the Verizon IndyCar Series championship.
Newgarden proved just as much during his victory Saturday night at Gateway Motorsports Park in Madison, Ill.
Team Penske qualified one-through-four on the grid for the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 with Will Power leading the way on pole position followed by Newgarden, Helio Castroneves and reigning series champ Simon Pagenaud. What should have been another Penske party for the powerhouse team ended up getting out of hand.
Newgarden pounced on Power at the beginning of the race and the made a bold outside pass on the first corner of the 1.25-mile oval. That sudden move threw Power off course, quite literally, as he lost control and spun up and into the wall. Ed Carpenter and Indy 500 winner Takuma Sato also crashed out as they were collected in a pile-up.
Newgarden led 170 of 248 laps but lost the lead late when Pagenaud beat him out to the line during the final round of pit stops. With 30 laps to go, Pagenaud left a sliver opening on the inside and that was all Newgarden needed to seize his opportunity to reclaim the lead. Newgarden nudged aside his teammate and squeezed through for the decisive pass. Pagenaud lost momentum when they tapped tires and veered high up the track allowing Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi Racing to also slip by for second.
Regrets? Newgarden had none.
“I didn’t want us to be denied tonight for sure,” Newgarden said in an IndyCar media release. “Simon [Pagenaud] gave me a lane to work with. I had a good tow on him, put my car inside in the opening, got about halfway alongside of him. One thing I didn’t want to do was touch him too hard. I think if I would have stayed too far left, I would have jumped the curb and that would have taken both of us out. I tried to get Simon to move over a little when we were coming to the opening of the corner. We both had to slow up.
“Fortunately worked out well for us. Pagenaud, didn’t get up into the wall or anything like that, so I would say it worked out OK for him, too.”
Pagenaud, who easily could have ended up in the wall like Power, probably wouldn’t agree with Newgarden’s assessment as he settled for third place while Castroneves finished fourth.
“I can’t say that I’m overly pleased, but that’s racing,” Pagenaud said in an IndyCar media release. “We still have the championship out there, so we’ll get ready for Watkins Glen.”
Power didn’t hold back words either.
“It wasn’t a fun ride,” he said in an IndyCar media release. “Josef went around the outside and got some of his dirty air and just lost it. Unfortunate. Very frustrating. Unbelievably frustrating for the whole Verizon Chevrolet team. It was just slippery. Super slippery. I wish I had done a few more burnouts to get more heat in the rear tires. The fronts were very slippery too. He just took my air going around on the outside. I tried to get back to power and got some dirty air. It just went. Unfortunate.”
Newgarden earned his fourth win of the season and third in four races as he tightened his grip on the championship with just two races remaining on the schedule.
With victory No. 4 of 2017, Newgarden now also has more wins this year than during his previous five seasons combined. It’s just another reminder of Newgarden’s quick ascent to stardom since joining Team Penske this season and making owner Roger Penske look that much smarter for adding the 26-year-old from Nashville, Tenn., to his already formidable stable of drivers.
Coupled with his risky over-under pass on Power en route to victory at Mid-Ohio last month and Newgarden has shown he’s willing to challenge anyone — and I mean anyone — to win races.
Dixon hot on Newgarden’s tail
However, Newgarden may need to count on those teammates to fend off Dixon for the championship.
While Newgarden now holds a 31-point lead over Dixon in the standings, history is on side of the four-time series champion heading into the final two races at Watkins Glen and Sonoma.
Dixon, fourth on the all-time IndyCar race wins list with 41, holds four victories at Watkins Glen and three at Sonoma. Don’t forget double points are also up for grabs at Sonoma, which also increases the likelihood of Dixon being able to claw back.
Dixon’s strategy at Gateway appeared to be the same as his win at Road America earlier this season where he started fifth — behind the four Penske drivers — but stayed out of trouble and let the Penske quartet duke it out amongst themselves. Considering how things are unfolding with the Penske crew, it’s not a bad strategy at all especially if Newgarden isn’t able to count on Pagenaud, Power and Castroneves to help him out in the next couple races as they, too, are still in the title hunt and all bets are now off about playing nice.
Trouble with Chip Ganassi Racing?
Everything is rosy for Dixon right now, but the same can’t be said for some of his fellow Chip Ganassi Racing teammates.
Tony Kanaan lost control on a warm-up lap spinning out and sending his car back into the wall. Kanaan got patched up in the pits and returned to the race, albeit a few laps down, but didn’t make it to the end with the team pulling him off the track after 168 laps.
Trouble is definitely brewing there as this follows up what happened at Pocono to Max Chilton, who was also ordered by the team to park it last week. Chilton finished 17th at Gateway after crashing out.
Hinch inches up to eighth
James Hinchcliffe picked up a couple places overall finishing eighth after starting 10th, although the Canadian driver looked to be poised for a higher result after running fifth for a good portion of the race.
Hinchcliffe said in an IndyCar media release it was a much more dramatic day than a two-spot gain would indicate.
“We just ultimately got caught out on the last yellow,” he said. “It was a wrong place, wrong time, and Conor [Daly] came around the outside of us there and took all of the air off us. I had to slide up the racetrack, and I think we maybe damaged a tire when we did that because after that we had a pretty big vibration and we couldn’t really attack Charlie [Kimball] there at the end. Probably should have finished sixth, but we’ll take a solid top 10 and hopefully build on that for Watkins Glen.”
Quick shifts
– Move over McGregor, another Conor — Conor Daly — shone on the day, earning a season-best fifth place. Daly’s transition to AJ Foyt Racing this season hasn’t been too smooth, but a solid effort here shows there are some positives to build upon.
– It was also a strong run for Sebastien Bourdais, who made his IndyCar return following his hard crash during qualifying for the Indy 500 in May that resulted in a fractured hip and pelvis. The Le Mans, France, native even led at one point when he stayed out a few laps while the leaders pitted.
– Bourdais’s Dale Coyne Racing teammate Ed Jones mathematically clinched the Sunoco Rookie of the Year award with his 13th place finish, although considering he’s the only full-time freshman in the series that shouldn’t be too surprising. The only driver who could have really challenged Jones for the title was Esteban Gutierrez, who was filling in for Bourdais while he was on the DL.
