Josef Newgarden has rocketed to the top of the IndyCar mountain for the first time in his career.
A flawless victory Sunday at the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio in Lexington has vaulted Newgarden up three spots and into first place in the standings.
While Team Penske features past champions Will Power and Simon Pagenaud and three-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves, it’s their latest acquisition who’s on a roll heading into the final stretch of the season.
Newgarden is showing exactly why team owner Roger Penske added the 26-year-old from Nashville, Tenn., to his already stellar stable this season. Having team president Tim Cindric switch from calling the race for Power to serving as Newgarden’s strategist helped ease the transition, but also proved how much faith the organization has in him.
It’s certainly paying off, as Newgarden displayed a dominant performance leading 73 of the 90-lap race to pick up his third win of the season, following up another brilliant victory just two weeks ago in Toronto.
Newgarden started on the front row beside pole sitter Power, but was all over his Penske teammate from the moment the green flag dropped. The decisive pass came early on lap 13 when Newgarden made an aggressive move running high and diving down low to swoop by Power.
From there Newgarden cruised away uncontested, until late in the race when Ed Jones spun and stalled off track to bring out the yellow flag. The caution erased Newgarden’s lengthy lead and bunched up the field to set up a potential dicey situation for the re-start with 19 laps to go.
Making things more intriguing was the tire situation with Newgarden on blacks while Power and Graham Rahal, who was running third, were both on reds, which are made of a softer compound and should provide more of a jump on a re-start.
However, stuck between Newgarden and Power was the lapped car of Esteban Gutierrez. The Dale Coyne Racing driver proved to be the buffer zone Newgarden needed on the re-start to pull away again with nothing but clean race track ahead as Power, Rahal, et al., burned away valuable push-to-pass time and wasted their red-tire advantage dealing with Gutierrez.
Power crossed the finish line in second over five seconds after Newgarden while local favourite Rahal, from New Albany, Ohio, sent the crowd home happy finishing third.
It’s debatable whether Gutierrez should have pulled over and allowed the thrilling shootout to commence, but he also had every right to hold his line in a futile attempt to pass Newgarden and return to the lead lap. Given that Newgarden was running away with the race prior to the yellow flag, it was almost like order was restored.
The Verizon IndyCar Series takes a three-week summer break before gearing up for the final four races of the season beginning with the ABC Supply 500 at Pocono Raceway on Aug. 20. Newgarden’s ascension to the top of the order adds some more intrigue although with double points up for grabs in the finale at Sonoma, the chase for the championship is far from over.
Hinchcliffe hangs on to 11th
There were no timely yellows in the cards for James Hinchcliffe this week. The Canadian driver, who pitted just before a caution period in Toronto to leap into a third-place finish, had to settle for a middle-of-the-pack 11th at Mid-Ohio.
Hinchcliffe, who drives the No. 5 Schmidt Peterson Motorsports Honda, qualified eighth but stumbled out of the gate and dropped three spots on the opening lap. The 30-year-old from Oakville, Ont., was forced to spend the first half of the race getting back to his starting position.
Hinchcliffe’s momentum came apart after the re-start as he had opted for black tires on the final pit stop while those right behind him — Takuma Sato, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Scott Dixon — were all on reds. All three eventually breezed by Hinchcliffe. Things went from bad to worse as Hinchcliffe had used up all of his push-to-pass and Conor Daly caught up to him with nine laps remaining.
Although Daly used to crash at Hinchcliffe’s pad, he showed no hesitation zooming past his former landlord.
The good news of the day for Hinchcliffe’s team was the return of Mikhail Aleshin in the No. 7 SPM Honda after Sebastian Saavedra subbed for the Toronto race. The team still hasn’t disclosed why they made the one-race switch, although Aleshin’s lack of performance on track — crashing out twice in his previous three races — may have been a deciding factor. It seemed to be a wake-up call for the Russian driver. While Aleshin had an incident during practice, he kept all four wheels on the pavement during the race to finish 14th after starting dead last in 21st.
Castroneves stays put, Dixon drops down
Scott Dixon and Helio Castroneves entered the race 1-2 in the championship and it looked like they were in for a battle after qualifying side-by-side on the grid.
Dixon has had strong showings at Mid-Ohio in the past with five wins, but he couldn’t extend that to six. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver from New Zealand slipped from his starting point of sixth to ninth with a hiccup in the pits during his last stop. Dixon has been first in the standings for the past two months and not only surrendered his lead but fell to third place and eight points back of Newgarden.
Castroneves also dropped a few spots in the race from fifth to seventh but maintains second place in the standings now seven points behind Newgarden.
Still not Hunter-Reay’s lucky day
Hunter-Reay’s string of bad luck just never seems to end.
The 2012 series champion has had a difficult campaign this season and that continued Sunday when he got tangled up with his own Andretti Autosport teammate Alexander Rossi early in the race as they battled for seventh.
Hunter-Reay managed to avoid wrecking the No. 28 Honda, though, and kept it clean from there to finish eighth.
Overall, it was another strong day at the track for Andretti Autosport with Sato finishing fifth and Rossi, who did not receive a penalty on the incident with Hunter-Reay, came in sixth.
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