Josef Newgarden – Syndication Server

‘You’ve got to run your program as normal as you can’ – Newgarden

The good thing for Will Power is he’s starting the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix on the second row and has teammate Josef Newgarden directly in front of him on the first row. The bad news for Power, who really needs to win at Nashville in order …

The good thing for Will Power is he’s starting the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix on the second row and has teammate Josef Newgarden directly in front of him on the first row.

The bad news for Power, who really needs to win at Nashville in order to overtake championship leader Alex Palou, is everyone from polesitter Kyle Kirkwood, Newgarden, to third-place Felix Rosenqvist, and the majority of those in proximity of Power’s No. 12 Chevy aren’t in contention for the title and only care about winning the final race of the season.

Set among a hungry group where seven of the drivers starting in the top 12 have yet to score a victory in 2024, Power’s life won’t be easy when the 206-lap contest gets under way, but he does have Newgarden nearby and willing to help if it doesn’t throw his race out of rhythm.

There’s also the fact that Nashville serves as Newgarden’s home race, which could make giving up the lead—if that’s needed to give Power the IndyCar crown—a hard ask by the Penske team.

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“You’ve got to run your program as normal as you can,” Newgarden told RACER. “You start trying to get too clever and orchestrate something, I think that’s when you get in trouble. Let’s try and do the best job in the No. 2 car of course. The priority for us is, if we’re in a position to win this championship, then we need to figure out how to seal that off, and we will. We will all do that.”

The third member of the Penske trio, Scott McLaughlin, is the only other driver with a mathematical chance of winning the championship, but that will end if Palou starts the race. Add in McLaughlin’s No. 3 Chevy, which starts ninth, to the list of Penske entries that will do what it takes to assist Power.

“We’re prepared to do what’s necessary to win the championship, because we’re all in it together,” Newgarden added. “But I think the way you get there is by running a normal race, in a lot of respects. We’ve just got to go do our jobs, take care of each other as normal, and hopefully the chips fall our way and we can button things up. We can do that. It’ll be a big hit for everybody.”

Penske makes a clean sweep of Milwaukee qualifying

Team Penske swept qualifying for this weekend’s Hy-Vee Milwaukee doubleheader with Scott McLaughlin taking pole for tonight’s first race and Josef Newgarden securing pole for Sunday afternoon’s race two. McLaughlin wheeled the No. 3 Chevy to the top …

McLaughlin wheeled the No. 3 Chevy to the top with a lap of 162.341mph and will start second for race two.

Behind the Penske duo for race one, taking place Saturday at 6 p.m. ET, the rest of the top six was completed by David Malukas, Alexander Rossi, Linus Lundqvist, and Will Power.

“It was hard, proper driving; I think Josef would concur that the UV of the track was high, was quite loose and a weird grip level,” McLaughlin said. “It’s nice to just wheel one and manage a pole here.”

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Mirroring his teammate, Newgarden will start second for Saturday’s race and is one pole for Sunday with a lap of 160.983mph in the No. 2 Chevy.

In race two, the Penske front row has Marcus Armstrong, Power, Lundqvist, and Rossi in tow.

“Hard laps around Milwaukee,” Newgarden said. “It makes you work for it. We probably overshot a little bit, but we weren’t going to undershoot today.”

Of the surprises, championship leader Alex Palou was missing speed with a run to 13th for race one and 10th for race two. Even worse, the entire Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team missed something big as its trio were three of the four slowest for Saturday and earned the last three spots for Sunday.

RACE 1 LINEUP

RACE 2 LINEUP

Newgarden heads up critical Friday practice at Milwaukee

The NTT IndyCar Series’ first official practice session at the Milwaukee Mile since 2015 took place under warm and humid conditions as dark clouds and blue skies alternated throughout the 90-minute outing led by Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden. …

Fastest at the July hybrid test on the historic Wisconsin oval, Penske was well placed again with Newgarden up front with a best lap of 158.762mph in the No. 2 Chevy and had teammates Scott McLaughlin not far behind in fifth (157.581mph) and Will Power in 11th (156.539mph).

Second was Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon at 158.080mph in the No. 9 Honda and rebounding from a dismal weekend in Portland, Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward was third in the No. 5 Chevy with a 157.750mph lap. Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist was fourth in the No. 60 Honda with a 157.628mph, followed by McLaughlin in fifth and Ganassi’s Marcus Armstrong in sixth with the No. 11 Honda at 157.146mph. Ganassi’s championship leader Alex Palou was ninth in the No. 10 Honda at 156.793mph.

“A lot of people on track,” Newgarden said of the constantly busy session. “I’m sure there’s individuals that didn’t get a super clear lap, and there’s probably more to be seen from everybody. You just account for that. I think we’ve accounted for that at other ovals. You’ll see the same thing here.

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“It’s encouraging. [I] think our car was really good. I was happy. [It] took some tuning. The tire was very different on the low line … Then we went to the current tire and it took a lot of work to get it where it needed to be. When we got through the first 30 minutes, I was super happy with the car. The team did a great job feeling comfortable. Yeah, I think Team Chevy did a good job, too, at least from what I’ve seen preliminarily.”

The field of 27 drivers opened the afternoon in a pair of special sessions to apply rubber to the second lane, and once they were done, the 3:30-5 p.m. CT run was most mostly anticlimactic. By 3:45pm, at least half the teams had their drivers sitting on pit lane, cars in the air, as damper and spring changes — some at the front or rear, and others on all four corners — were tried. After chassis setup work was completed, teams shifted to long stints to simulate race running; with Friday’s practice serving as the only practice session of the event, the 90 minutes were more structured than usual.

The only crash of the day belonged to Ed Carpenter Racing’s Christian Rasmussen who got high and slid across tire marbles and met the Turn 2 wall with the right side of his car. The Danish rookie was uninjured, and the car, which had crumpled right-side suspension, will be ready to go on Saturday.

UP NEXT: Qualifying, 2:15 p.m. ET Saturday.

RESULTS

Team orders or not among IndyCar title contenders?

Will team orders come into effect this weekend at the Hy-Vee Milwaukee doubleheader for the two main championship contenders? It’s asking a lot for Saturday’s 250-lap NTT IndyCar Series race, but it’s more possible once we get to Sunday’s …

Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou in the No. 10 Honda has led the championship for nine of the 14 races run in 2024, including the last seven — since Laguna Seca in June — and has 54 points over Team Penske’s Will Power in the No. 12 Chevy. Palou’s teammate Scott Dixon was in the title conversation until the last race, and now sits 101 points behind Palou.

There’s almost no scenario where Dixon would be able to overcome that big of a deficit in three races, but nonetheless, the team isn’t ready to ask the six-time champion to fall back and become Palou’s tail gunner.

“We’ve never had team orders,” CGR managing director Mike Hull told RACER. “We’ve always left the drivers to have some practical sense about it. We have two 250-lap races, so if we get down to lap 248 of laps, and something has to happen, the drivers can figure it out. But it’s a one-mile flat oval and I don’t think that we can plan on who’s going to do what to whom until we get down to well after the last stop. I can’t imagine that Penske would do it any differently, nor would anybody else do it any differently.”

With a maximum of 162 points available starting at Milwaukee 1, Dixon isn’t completely out of the title conversation with his 101-point gap, but it would take a miracle for him to get back into the game. Power’s teammate Scott McLaughlin, in fourth with a 88-point deficit to Palou, is in a similar situation.

Penske’s Josef Newgarden, in seventh with a giant 131-point shortfall, would need three straight miracles to join the championship battle, but that doesn’t mean he and McLaughlin will fall in behind Power on Saturday. As Hull noted, a lot of laps need to be turned before strategy calls to rally an entire team behind the two leading title candidates are made, but Power would welcome the help and encourages the Penske outfit to support its strongest competitor.

“I think if we have the cars to win, and we want to win the championship, yes, that’s probably what we should do with three to go,” Power said. “We should probably be looking at how can we get the 12 car in the best possible position. Really, that’s our only chance. We’ve got three really good drivers — four really if you include (A.J. Foyt Racing’s) Santino (Ferrucci) — that are capable of running at the front that can take up a lot of positions. If I’m the head of that group and we win the race, that starts to make things look possible.”

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If the McLaughlins and Dixons and Newgardens are in a deeper championship hole once Saturday night’s race is done, team orders could become a more formal matter within Ganassi and Penske. Hull is also wary of asking Palou’s teammates to race with an agenda.

“If you don’t race the way you normally have raced all year, if you don’t have that mindset, the odds of you having the same result are pretty slim to start with,” he said. “That’s really how we’ve always looked at it, and it hasn’t mattered how many drivers we have.”

The other strategy for Ganassi to consider — which doesn’t exactly work for Penske with Power’s sizable 54-point gap to Palou — is to have their non-contenders play offense rather than defense.

“If Dixon wins the race over Will Power, he takes points away from Will,” Hull added. “If they’re together at the end of the race, and Scott would be in a position to win, and Will’s in a position to be second, that’s the best thing in the world for us to do if Alex isn’t leading. That’s if you’re trying to look at it strategically.

“Penske has three cars. They’re going to try to take points away from everybody they can, let’s face it, to try to try to help themselves, because the three of them are still in it. There’s two of them in a position to be able to move up in the championship. And why wouldn’t Dixon want to do the same? Those are the main thoughts about it.”

Newgarden on Power: ‘I get that he’s upset’

Josef Newgarden said he intended to clear the air with Team Penske teammate Will Power as soon as he had an opportunity after a chain reaction that followed a late restart on Newgarden’s behalf resulted in Power crashing out of Saturday night’s NTT …

Newgarden led as the field lined up for a restart with 10 laps remaining but launched for the green later than the cars behind him expected, resulting in several cars checking up and Arrow McLaren’s Alexander Rossi slamming into the rear of Power’s car.

Power was clearly incensed as he returned to the pits, and while he took care not to name Newgarden specifically while describing the incident during the race broadcast, he emphasized that he believed that the blame lay with “whoever was leading.”

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“I’ll go talk to him immediately once I get done with you guys,” Newgarden said during the post-race press conference. “As soon as I see him, I’ll talk to him.

“I know Will pretty well. I get that he’s upset. He got wrecked out of the race. He’s a championship contender. When you get run into, especially after the night he had — he had a great night, a fast car, he drove super-well – he led two-thirds of this thing. Imagine how he feels. I get it. I get that he’s upset.

“I think he’s going to try to place blame wherever he directly sees it right off the bat. He gets hot quick. I think when you calm down and look at it, it’s probably not going to be exactly what he thought it was in the moment.

“But the point is, he’s going to be upset because this is not good for his championship. Believe me, the last thing I want to happen is for Will to get hit. I can tell you that right now.

“If I go and sit with my boss tonight, he’s going to look at me and say, ‘Did you do a good job tonight?’ I want him to think I did a good job every single night that I see him.

“I wouldn’t change much from my procedure. It’s not that different than what I’ve done in the past. I hate that Will got caught out in a situation tonight, someone running into him. It’s not fun.”

Newgarden admitted that he went late on the final restart. “It was definitely late,” he said. “I was trying to go as late as I could. It’s not that different of a restart than I’ve done before.” But he denied accusations made by Power in the immediate aftermath of the incident that he had been repeatedly speeding up and then slowing down.

“If anyone, especially on our team, wants to look at the data, you’re going to see a very consistent speed,” he said. This was verified by the series, which said that Newgarden’s speed remained at 80mph in the moments immediately prior to the incident.

Race control manages restarts by using the lead driver’s throttle data as the cue for when to return to green flag conditions. Newgarden admitted that he was waiting until as late in the restart zone as he possibly could before taking off, as he is free to do within the rules, but suggested that the green flag might have been shown early, which would have signaled to drivers in the line that it was time to accelerate even though Newgarden had yet to return to racing speed up at the front.

“What looked like happened is that it went green momentarily before I went, just momentarily,” Newgarden said. “I’m talking like half a second or a second.

“If it’s just that slight difference in timing, if race control goes green and I haven’t gone yet for just a second… I think people were trying to jump, which we’ve had a problem with, to be honest. We’ve had a problem with jump-starts the last two years. It’s a constant topic in the driver meetings.

“If there’s just a slight miscue there, I think people are very on edge on these restarts trying to get the run. It looked like it mistimed in the back, at least with one individual, and that’s what caused a problem.

“From my side, it’s the last thing you want to happen at the end. I don’t want to create a wreck. I was not trying to do that. That was not my intention. I don’t know that I’d do much different because it’s how I would do a restart.”

Newgarden spins and wins at WWTR after Penske drama

It took a spin, a phenomenal pitstop and the possibility of some heated conversations in the team truck later in the evening, but Josef Newgarden led Scott McLaughlin home for a Team Penske 1-2 in Saturday night’s NTT IndyCar Series race at World …

Newgarden capitalized on a perfect late restart coupled with a minor glitch for McLaughlin, whose hybrid refused to deploy, to seal his second victory of the season.

“The team has done a great job,” Newgarden said. “Nice to get another win on the board.”

McLaughlin led the bulk of the race, but the key moment came on the second-to-last restart when the pair – running a slightly different strategy to the cars behind – swooped in for a splash of fuel and, crucially, a new set of tires. That gave them an immediate advantage over their rivals, and a phenomenal 5.1s stop from the No. 2 crew allowed Newgarden to move into a lead that he’d hold for the remainder of the race.

Linus Lundqvist finished third in the No. 8 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda thanks to a late pass on Colton Herta, although the latter will be more than pleased with fourth after a qualifying crash condemned the No. 26 Andretti Global Honda to starting from the second-last row.

So, why was it a Newgarden vs McLaughlin showdown at the end? The answer lies in the last couple of stoppages. On lap 241, David Malukas was battling Will Power for fifth on the road but potentially the race lead once the various strategies were factored in. Malukas dived to Power’s inside and was squeezed onto the inside curb, sending the No. 66 Meyer Shank Honda spinning across the track and into the wall.

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“I had a run, I set it up, I went down the inside… I braked, I slowed down, I gave him as much room as I could and he gave me a tap,” an emotional Malukas told NBC Sports.

“He came by and screamed at me… Man, you had a whole second lane you could have gone up there. I thought it was a good move. If he’d just stayed in the second lane we would have been fine.

“It was just such a good weekend for us. I really wanted that result.”

Once that was cleaned up, the field was lining up for the restart with 10 laps to go when what looked like a slow launch from Newgarden up front caused a chain reaction that resulted in Alexander Rossi launching his No. 7 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet off the back of Power’s car. Romain Grosjean got caught in the aftermath, while further back, Jack Harvey was also knocked into a spin. Red flag.

How the chaos unfolded with 8 laps remaining.

📺: #Bommarito500 on USA and Peacock pic.twitter.com/IjwIB6fpjL

— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) August 18, 2024

One didn’t need to be particularly gifted in interpreting body language to register Power’s displeasure as he clambered from the car and returned to pitlane.

“The leader,” said Power diplomatically when asked who was responsible for the incident. “Whoever is leading, where you’re supposed to go between [Turns 3 and 4], he went, he stopped, he went, he stopped… I knew that was going to happen as soon as I checked up, because he checked up again. I knew I was going to get pounded.

“Man, disappointing. We had such a good car. We get to the last two laps of the last two races and have bad luck. I do not know why they would just keep backing up. I do not understand it.”

Herta’s radio transmission suggested he agreed: “That’s dirty from Newgarden; he stopped and started and stopped and started — that should be a penalty.”

Newgarden saw it differently.

“The worst part about that is the No. 12 [Power] not making it home,” he said. “I watched it on the TV and it kind of looked like the green momentarily went out before I went, and it caused a big accordion. I hate that that happened. The last thing you want with 10 to go is to cause a mess.

“I was trying to go as late as I could, at the end of the zone. I wouldn’t have done anything different.”

The first of the less consequential cautions came early when Ed Carpenter (No. 20 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet) and Katherine Legge (No. 51 Dale Coyne Racing Honda) found themselves on the same piece of track on lap nine. That rarely works out well, and in this case it ended Legge’s day on the spot.

Shortly after the restart, Carpenter’s teammate Rinus VeeKay got crossed up on lap 17, catching out Conor Daly, who tagged VeeKay’s rear and was pitched into a 360 spin. The pursuing Kyle Kirkwood (No. 27 Andretti Global Honda) had nowhere to go but into the back of Daly’s No. 78 Juncos Hollinger Chevy, and he in turn was rear-ended by Daly’s JHR teammate Romain Grosjean. Kirkwood took the brunt of the damage on that occasion.

A spell of green flag running was interrupted again on lap 86 when Kyffin Simpson lost the rear of the No. 4 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda through the Turn 3/4 section and backed it into the wall.

Mechanical gremlins also had their say in the evening, most notably when what appeared to be hybrid issue ended what looked like a promising day for Marcus Ericsson and the No. 28 Andretti Global Honda. A suspected engine problem eliminated Pato O’Ward earlier on, while an unspecified issue brought an early close to Graham Rahal’s race.

RESULTS

Solid Toronto day for Team Penske goes up in smoke in one corner

A look at the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto lap chart shows Team Penske held fourth, fifth, and seventh positions on the 76th lap of the 85-lap NTT IndyCar Series race. Come lap 77, the race went from green to yellow due to Penske’s fifth-place …

A look at the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto lap chart shows Team Penske held fourth, fifth, and seventh positions on the 76th lap of the 85-lap NTT IndyCar Series race.

Come lap 77, the race went from green to yellow due to Penske’s fifth-place Will Power making an overly ambitious passing attempt at Turn 5 on teammate Scott McLaughlin. The lunging maneuver crashed McLaughlin out of fourth, and the team’s day began to spiral.

Lapping in his ill-gotten fourth under caution, Power circulated around and found McLaughlin, who waited at the corner, giving him a salty round of applause as he drove by. McLaughlin would see a near-podium turn into 16th.

The next entry on the lap chart is found on lap 81 when Power was invited by race control to perform a drive-through penalty for the race-ending hit on McLaughlin, which turned his fourth into a 12th as the last car on the lead lap.

Penske’s Josef Newgarden was the team’s final hope and had seventh in hand—likely sixth with Power’s penalty—but in the Turn 5 panic to avoid the crashing McLaughlin, cars slowed in front of Newgarden, who slowed as well, and he was hit from behind by David Malukas, which punctured a rear tire.

Forced to pit lane for a fresh set of Firestones, Newgarden returned to finish 11th, best among the misfortune-riddled Penske trio. From having three cars headed for a top seven to all three relegated to 11th through 16th, a good day turned bad for three of IndyCar’s best.

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“I never want to run into a teammate,” Power said. “That is not something I ever set out to do and I apologize to Scott and his team for knocking them out of the race. We were both in a position to have a solid day against the two Andretti cars and I knew I had a better tire situation than Scott. Unfortunately, we got together and gifted (championship leader Alex) Palou too many points.”

McLaughlin was understandably unamused.

“It’s a low-percentage move when probably we’re both going to have a pretty good day,” he said. “He’s come from a long way back, and it’s just hard to stop, isn’t it? Do you do that to a teammate? I don’t know. I get we’re racing for a championship, but when we’re both ahead of Palou, it’s just a low percentage move. It’s contact with a teammate. You never want to see that.”

Newgarden’s season of extreme highs and lows continued, starting with a loose wheel on his first stop that took him out of podium contention.

“That’s just kind of how our year has gone, unfortunately,” he said. “This crew has been so solid all year long but we just had a communication issue on the first stop. Happens to everyone, but we managed it well and fought back to get in position for a top-five finish before the late-race issue. Our Chevy had been really good all weekend long. We’ll bounce back in St. Louis next month and push strong to the end of the season.”

Newgarden’s title hopes “surrendered to fate”

Tenth in the championship. Eight races to go. Six are ovals. An imposing deficit of 143 points to Alex Palou atop the drivers’ standings. Josef Newgarden’s title hopes are remote at best, but the NTT IndyCar Series’ master of ovals is in his element …

Tenth in the championship. Eight races to go. Six are ovals. An imposing deficit of 143 points to Alex Palou atop the drivers’ standings.

Josef Newgarden’s title hopes are remote at best, but the NTT IndyCar Series’ master of ovals is in his element this weekend with the Hy-Vee doubleheader, where he’s expected to use the pair of races to draw closer to Palou. So where does the two-time Indianapolis 500 winner place his approach to Iowa and the rest of the events on the calendar in his quest to win this third title? Is it an all-out attack?

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“We’re surrendered to fate in a lot of ways,” the Team Penske driver told RACER. “It’s been a really hard year. Indy was amazing; everything about it was incredible for the team. And then when you look at the championship, it’s been the opposite. It’s been worse than feast or famine. This one’s been a super roller coaster. Super highs and lows. So, we are where we are. The last two events in particular were really tough. Laguna ended up being a bust, and then Mid-Ohio turned into a bust. So that’s a lot of why we’re 143 back. That’s really bad. So I’m not going to say we can’t win the championship. Anything’s possible, and I always believe that.”

Having won almost every oval IndyCar race in recent years, Newgarden should be able to make inroads on Palou, or whoever’s leading the championship after Iowa. But the 2017 and 2019 series champion also knows he’ll need more than the ovals to catch up to his rivals at the front of the battle for the drivers’ crown. With the street race at Toronto up next on the schedule and a late August trip to Oregon for the road course at Portland, Newgarden must deliver at all eight races to thrust the No. 2 Chevy into championship contention.

“What I don’t want to rely on is Iowa,” he said. “I think most people, they look at us and they go, ‘Well, this is going to help you.’ But I’m more worried about Portland and Toronto. We can be great here. We can be great on the other ovals. That’s good, but it’s not going to be enough. We’ve got to have a great Toronto. We’ve got to have a great Portland. We were good at St Pete, great at Long Beach. I think Toronto can be good. And I know we can build the Portland car great.”

Newgarden’s comeback attempt starts Saturday night at 8pm ET across 250 laps, and continues Sunday with another 250 laps at 12:30pm ET, with both airing on NBC.

Law, Newgarden reunited for Mid-Ohio

Team Penske’s sheriff is back on pit lane. That’s the nickname Josef Newgarden gave his former crew chief Travis Law – “The Sheriff” – while they were winning races and a championship together through the 2022 NTT IndyCar Series season. Their …

Team Penske’s sheriff is back on pit lane. That’s the nickname Josef Newgarden gave his former crew chief Travis Law — “The Sheriff” — while they were winning races and a championship together through the 2022 NTT IndyCar Series season.

Their chemistry brought immense personal and professional success to the organization; at the time of Law’s exit from the No. 2 Chevy program, 18 of Newgarden’s 25 IndyCar victories had been produced during their time together.

After a new managerial role opened up for Law (pictured above) in the Porsche Penske Motorsport IMSA GTP program that debuted in 2023, he shifted into his current position as PPM’s competition director, but he’s back for a one-off return as Newgarden’s chief mechanic at Mid-Ohio for the most positive of reasons.

Law’s replacement on the No. 2 Chevy, Chad Gordon, is away from Mid-Ohio this weekend as he and his wife have welcomed a baby into the world, and with the need for an assist during a quiet weekend for IMSA, Law stepped up to temporarily fill Gordon’s shoes.

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“It is great to hear that Chad and his wife have a happy, healthy new addition to their family,” Newgarden told RACER. “It speaks to the depth we have tried to build over the years that Chad can take some time to do his job as a father and the team will not miss a beat.

“Travis is obviously no stranger to IndyCar, and he has been a key member of this No. 2 Chevy team in the past. He has certainly done a tremendous job over the last two years in building up the sports car team. I think he enjoys being back for a weekend, and we certainly like having someone of his caliber that we can bring in.”

Nature of Laguna Seca already evolving, says Newgarden

Josef Newgarden says that the track surface at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca has already degraded notably since its resurface in 2023, becoming more demanding on tires and trickier to handle. In its jet black state for the NTT IndyCar Series …

Josef Newgarden says that the track surface at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca has already degraded notably since its resurface in 2023, becoming more demanding on tires and trickier to handle.

In its jet black state for the NTT IndyCar Series finale last September, the track offered a lot of lateral grip, and that grip was evenly spread across the width. Now, after less than a year, this busy track has been thoroughly worn in, with the open aggregate stressing the tires under load, and less grip on the preferred racing line.

Newgarden’s Hitachi Team Penske Chevrolet finished the session in fourth place, a quarter second off pacesetting teammate Scott McLaughlin, and said he was at least content that the basic setups from the team are strong.

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“The good thing we learned was that our car was in a nice window right away,” said the two-time champion and two-time Indy 500 winner. “That’s always a great thing to find out when you roll off.

“I was pretty happy with things. We didn’t make a ton of adjustments. Just getting a read between the different compounds, trying to understand how to strategize for tomorrow, which you always have to do in qualifying.”

Asked about varying levels of grip in certain corners, he replied: “I think Turn 2 was like that. Probably the worst corner for it. It seems a bit patchy in Turn 2. You have some on-and-off grip through the corner that’s changing.

“In general around the track, it seems a little bit more particular for line and car placement than last year. I think you really have to be on the rubber.

“But it’s very fast still. It’s high grip. I feel like you’re tiptoeing a little bit more than last year, but the speed isn’t down very much. Maybe half a second slower to what last year’s time was, six-tenths, something like that. It’s still pretty quick.”

Newgarden also praised the venue in general, saying “This is a real racer’s track. I think that’s part of the reason people that come out here, they enjoy the history of motorsport, they understand IndyCar racing really well. It’s a legendary track. We all enjoy being here. We’re finding a lot of fans. You move the date, they’re still going to show up.

“We love being out here. It’s noticeable that fans like being out here too. Like we talked about before, it’s nice to have this break in the middle of the summer, to be honest.”