Josef Newgarden, who became the 75th individual winning driver of the Indianapolis 500 this past May, revealed Friday the bas-relief image that makes his the 110th face on the Borg-Warner Trophy.
The event, held at the Stutz Building in downtown Indianapolis, is the 11th time there has been a formal unveiling of the winning driver’s sterling silver image, which, since 1990, has been created by sculptor William Behrends.
Newgarden led only five laps, but one of those was the crucial one. The 32-year-old – he turns 33 next week – sent his Team Penske Chevrolet past defending Indy winner, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Ericsson, on the run to the white flag following a race stoppage. Although Ericsson tried his best to claw it back over the remaining 2.5 miles, Newgarden clung on to win by a mere 0.0974s.
In scoring the 19th Indy 500 win for Roger Penske’s team, he not only had to climb from 17th on the grid, but also had to beat nine former Indy 500 winners – Ericsson, his own teammate Will Power, Simon Pagenaud, Helio Castroneves, Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan, Alexander Rossi, Takuma Sato and Ryan Hunter-Reay.
Newgarden, who won the IndyCar Series championship in 2017 and ’19, told RACER that he feels both exhilaration and relief when he looks back at the conclusion of the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500.
“It hit everything,” he said. “The euphoria was a high unlike anything else I’ve experience in racing, but there was relief in my case, too, because it took 12 attempts. Others have been here a long time and never won it, and some who have been here as long as I have and finally won. It was all that wrapped into a day and it was magical.”
While many close observers of Newgarden’s talent, in acknowledging that he drives for far and away the most successful team at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, felt it was inevitable that one day he would pass the twin checkers first and claim the sport’s ultimate prize. Yet a couple of years ago, the Nashville, TN native made comments along the lines of, ‘If it happens, it happens.’ He doesn’t backtrack on his sentiments.
“In a lot of ways, I had made my peace with that possibility that we might not win,” he said. “You put so much effort into this; there’s so much emphasis on this race – not just from me but from every single individual around me – and yet there’s just no guarantee that it’s going to work out. So you have to focus on the moment in front of you, the opportunity you have each year, and to take comfort from the fact that just to make the show and be part of the race is a big deal.
“Having that perspective gives you peace of mind and an ability to just work on the task at hand. We were lucky enough that it worked out for us in 2023, but that doesn’t mean it will work out for us ever again even if we make exactly the same effort, but I sure hope that it does! I’m more motivated than ever to try and make it happen multiple times in the future.”
Although the result came in an IndyCar season when Newgarden won four of the five oval races, it also came after three straight years of Penske struggles at the Speedway. Even after qualifying this year, it didn’t seem that The Captain’s ship was ruling the seas, with Power, Scott McLaughlin and Newgarden lining up 12th, 14th and 17th. Come May 28th, Newgarden took the green flag with a bullish outlook that morphed into well-founded confidence in the opening stint.
“Go back to testing in April,” he said. “Luke Mason [race engineer] and the rest of the team had built up a car that felt to me like a winning car. I said after my last run in that test, ‘If we have this car on race day, we’re going to win.’ Well, we showed up at the Month of May and we worked on a lot of stuff, and then finally put that setup back on for Carb Day, and said, ‘We need to run this; this is what we said we were going to run.’ And the very first stint of the race, I thought, ‘We’ve got the car to do it; if we get everything else right, we can win this race.’
“It was really fun to have that realization early, because if you feel positive about where you’re at, it can change your day, and it makes it easier to go out there and hit your points and execute. We had an ease about us from that first stint on, and we executed as a team – and that’s what it takes at Indy — and we were able to do it this time around.”
Michelle Collins, global director of marketing and PR at BorgWarner Inc., harks back to Memorial Day Weekend and admits she found this latest edition of the Indy 500 nerve-wracking.
“Those last three laps, I was just pacing around, I could hardly watch!” said Collins. “I was nervous for Marcus, I was nervous for Josef, who I knew wanted it so badly, and had been trying for 12 years. I was a little torn because we’d gotten to know Marcus over the previous 12 months and were excited at the prospect of him winning back-to-back, but at the same time we were tense for Josef because we wanted him to feel the same thrill of winning.”
Collins said, too, that the 500 is still the perfect forum for BorgWarner Inc.
“It’s a source of excitement and pride for our employees to carry on that tradition,” she said, “There are a lot of connections within the automotive industry. For instance, we know Roger Penske well not only through IndyCar, so there are many mutual connections, and that spills over into day-to-day business. To be part of this event that goes back 110 years, and to have been part of it for almost 90 of those years is just a fantastic opportunity that can’t be matched. BorgWarner’s connection with Indianapolis Motor Speedway is probably the longest-standing sporting partnership ever, and they’ve become synonymous.”
Behrends, having been the sculptor assigned this brief dating back to 1990, has now added 12 Penske drivers to the Borg-Warner Trophy.
“Yes, Team Penske drivers make up almost one-third of all the images I’ve sculpted on the Borg-Warner Trophy,” said Behrends from his studio in Tryon, NC. “My first Penske driver was Rick Mears in 1991 and that was an honor since it was his fourth Indy 500 win and he won in such dramatic fashion with an amazing pass on Michael Andretti in the closing stages of the race.
“Tryon is about 90 minutes from Mooresville, NC so they are almost the ‘hometown team’ for us. Josef gave Roger Penske his 19th 500 win and his first win as the owner of Indianapolis Motor Speedway…
“I don’t want to play favorites but it would be special to celebrate whoever wins number 20 at Indy for Team Penske. It could be Josef with back-to-back wins for all we know. He’s that good, especially on ovals.”