Josef Newgarden’s desire to put the events of the past few days behind him didn’t take long to bear fruit at Barber Motorsports Park on Friday when he put the No. 2 Team Penske Chevrolet atop the timing charts for the NTT IndyCar Series’ opening …
Josef Newgarden’s desire to put the events of the past few days behind him didn’t take long to bear fruit at Barber Motorsports Park on Friday when he put the No. 2 Team Penske Chevrolet atop the timing charts for the NTT IndyCar Series’ opening practice session.
Newgarden first went to the top with 18 of 75 the available minutes left on the clock, and improved his time in the final 10 minutes to settle on a 1m06.7045s.
“That’s the best medicine in the world for someone like me,” he told NBC Sports. “It was great to be out here and just getting to turn laps. I was a little bit off my game in the beginning for sure, I dropped a wheel and made a mistake and threw away a set of tires, which was unfortunate.
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“But we just kept going, came up with a new plan, and I think the positive thing is the car was really fast right away. This team has done a good job; I love being here with the No. 2 group… I feel good about things.”
Newgarden’s time remained unbeaten, but only barely – Pato O’Ward fell just 0.0830s short in the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet, and Penske’s Will Power was only a further 0.0039s behind in the No.12 to complete a Chevy sweep of the top three spots. Colton Herta was fourth fastest and best of the Honda’s with a 1m08.8002s in the No. 26 Andretti Global car, leaving Christian Lundgaard to round out the top five for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.
Barber’s undulating layout lived up to its challenging reputation within the first 15 minutes when Newgarden spun into the grass at Turn 13, bringing out the first red flag of the session. The field was back on track with minimal delay, only for a second red flag to fly 10 minutes later when Agustin Canapino lost the rear of the No. 78 JHR Chevrolet at Turn 1 and went off.
O’Ward, Alexander Rossi and Felix Rosenqvist all had minor trips through the gravel later in the session, but Rossi also found himself in the middle of a potentially more consequential incident in the final minutes. That one started before he was even on the scene – Romain Grosjean had come across Jack Harvey while the latter was still getting up to speed after leaving the pits, and while Harvey appeared to have left enough room, Grosjean was seemingly displeased. He made this clear a few corners later by squeezing Harvey off the road, leaving Rossi, who was trailing the pair, to thread his way between them.
Elsewhere, Luca Ghiotto turned his first-ever IndyCar laps in Dale Coyne Racing’s No. 51 Honda, completing 39 laps with a best of 1m08.8638s as he worked to get his bearings in his new surrounds.
Josef Newgarden emotionally talks after Team Penske was caught cheating at St. Petersburg. Check out what Newgarden had to say!
[autotag]Josef Newgarden[/autotag] started the 2024 NTT IndyCar Series season on the right note by winning the opening event. However, it quickly went downhill after the IndyCar Series announced that Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin were disqualified from St. Petersburg after breaking the rules with Push to Pass. Also, Will Power was docked 10 points.
Instead of releasing a press release, Newgarden spoke to the media in a press conference on Friday morning. The 2023 Indianapolis 500 winner talked about the situation and was really emotional as he held back tears.
“The tricky thing about this whole situation is I didn’t know I did anything wrong until Monday after Long Beach,” Newgarden said. “It’s the first time I heard that I broke the rules. You guys can call me every name in the book – you can call me incompetent, call me an idiot, call me an [expletive], call me stupid, whatever you want to call me, but I’m not a liar.”
Josef Newgarden says you can call him all sorts of names, and he concedes it's not a believable story, but these are the facts about his overtake assist usage at St Pete.
The team says code was accidently left in the engine that bypassed the hold from a hybrid testing session. pic.twitter.com/Hb82an8cC0
“The story that I know, which is the truth, is almost too convenient to be believable. So to answer your question, no, I didn’t leave St. Pete thinking we pulled something over on somebody. I didn’t know that we did something wrong until this week. The key difference on the No. 2 car, which is important to understand, is that somehow we convinced ourselves that there was a rule change to restarts specifically with overtake usage.”
At the end of the day, no one knows whether Team Penske was truly attempting to break the rules or not. Yet, Newgarden and McLaughlin’s results won’t change, and the team faces the consequences of their actions. It will be tough to put this story behind them, but Team Penske must focus forward and climb out of this massive points hole.
Josef Newgarden has taken responsibility for the irregular usage of push-to-pass (P2P) at IndyCar’s season opener at St. Petersburg last month, which resulted in his victory being disqualified when the issued came to light at Long Beach. Newgarden …
Josef Newgarden has taken responsibility for the irregular usage of push-to-pass (P2P) at IndyCar’s season opener at St. Petersburg last month, which resulted in his victory being disqualified when the issued came to light at Long Beach.
Newgarden was determined to have used the P2P three times during restarts, when it was supposed to have been deactivated. Team Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin, who used it illegally once, was also disqualified from third. Will Power was issued a points deduction for having full-time P2P enabled on his car, although he did not use it.
The ability for the Penske cars to use P2P at times when it should have been inactive has been traced to a software oversight by the team, and McLaughlin is thought to have inadvertently hit the button out of habit. Newgarden’s usage was intentional, which he says was due him misunderstanding the rules.
“I think at this point it’s really important to look at the facts of what happened, and the facts are extremely clear. There’s no doubt that we were in breach of the rules at St. Petersburg. I used push to pass at an unauthorized time twice on two different restarts,” he said while publicly addressing the issue for the first time on Friday.
“There’s really nothing else to it other than that those are the rules, and we did not adhere to them. For me, what’s really important about that is, there’s only one person sitting in the car. It’s just me. And so that responsibility and the use of the push to pass in the correct manner falls completely on me. It is my responsibility to know the rules and the regulations at all points, and to make sure that I get that right. And with that regard, I failed my team miserably. Complete failure from my side to get that right. You know, it’s my job as the leader of the No.2 car to not make mistakes like that. You cannot make a mistake at this level in that situation.
“There’s no room for it. There’s no room for that type of mistake anywhere, certainly not at the top level of motorsports. And I don’t want to hide from that. It’s an embarrassing situation to have to go through, to see what’s transpired. It’s demoralizing in a lot of ways. And there’s nothing that I can say that changes the fact of what happened. I mean, it’s pretty clear. That’s why I say I think the facts are most important right now. That’s what really matters. I also think the truth is important, and I think that there can be space for both of those things. So if there’s anything that I wanted to come say… I want to deeply apologize to our fans, our partners, my teammates, the competitors that I race against, anybody that’s in our community.
“I’ve worked my entire career to hold myself to an incredibly high standard. And clearly I’ve fallen very short of that in this respect. Once again, I can’t overstate, it’s a difficult thing to wrestle with. It’s a very embarrassing process to go through and I hope we can find a way forward after this. I mean, that’s really all you can do, is try and find a way forward after the fact.”
Newgarden says he believed until Long Beach that his use of P2P at St. Petersburg had been permissible. Josh Tons/Motorsport Images
Newgarden reiterated that his use of the P2P at St. Pete was deliberate, but said that he remained unaware that he was doing anything wrong until the series brought the issue to the team’s attention at Long Beach. Instead, he says he was under the mistaken impression that the series had introduced a change in restart procedures as they relate to P2P.
“The tricky thing about this whole situation is, I didn’t know I did anything wrong until Monday after Long Beach. It’s the first time I heard that I broke the rules,” he said.
“You guys call me every name of the book. You can call me incompetent. Call me an idiot, call me an a**hole, call me stupid, whatever you want to call me, but I’m not a liar. And the story, that I know is the truth, is almost too convenient to be believable. So, no, I, I didn’t leave St. Pete thinking we pulled something over on somebody. I didn’t know that we did something wrong until this week.
“I know what happened. I know why it happened, and I don’t think it’s very believable. Even when I try and tell the story back, I don’t think any of us believe it’ll be believable to somebody, but it’s the truth. So, no, I didn’t know I did something wrong in St. Pete. The key difference on the No.2 car, which is important to understand, is that somehow, some way, we convinced ourselves that there was a rule change to restart, specifically with overtake usage. And you say, well, how do you come up with this? This never happened before. The only place that this got introduced was with the Thermal exhibition race. It’s the only time in my time in IndyCar where we’ve actually had a legitimate legal change of the push to pass system where it’s going to be operatable at a time, other than at the alt start/finish line. It was going to be usable in qualifying, too.
“There was a lot of discussion around it, and we somehow genuinely believed and convinced ourselves that at St. Pete, the rule was, now you can use it immediately on restarts. You don’t have to wait til the alt start/finish line. It’s going to be available immediately. I even wanted the team to remind me of this so that I didn’t forget.”
The problem came to light during Sunday morning’s warmup session at Long Beach when it became apparent that Penske’s drivers were using P2P at a time when it should have been unavailable to the entire field due to a technical error in race control. This was fixed, but Newgarden still went into the Long Beach race believing that there had been a change to the restart rules. He admits that he actually tried to use the system again during the Long Beach start.
“The craziest part of the story is the software issue that no one knew about. It just perpetuated that belief even further,” he said. “So then you go through St. Pete, you go through Thermal, where it’s an actual change and everybody’s using it. And then you go to Long Beach and it’s still in the car. And the first time that any of us hear about this software issue or mistake is the warmup. And the even crazier part of that is, even when you learn about the software issue that no one knew about, and it was fixed, I still believed the procedural difference on restarts applied for Long Beach. I tried to do the exact same thing leading the race at Long Beach. I even pushed the button — I came over the radio; I said, ‘Hey, the guys, the overtake’s not working correctly.’
“I said it throughout the whole first lap because it wasn’t working. I don’t know why in your right mind you would do that. Did I try and come up with a conspiracy and then cover… it’s not. The truth is, somehow we got that mixed up and it somehow got entangled with a mistake, and it’s created some ridiculously unbelievable storyline. But the facts of the matter are, I used it illegally. I wasn’t allowed to. And I can’t change that. Whatever I say going forward will not change those facts. And it kills me that it doesn’t. I wish I could go back in time and somehow reverse all this, but I can’t.”
In addition to Newgarden’s confusion about the regulations, the other major failure in the process was the existence of the code in the electronics chain on the Penske cars that allowed P2P to be freely available in the first place.
“On Sunday morning of Long Beach, I was like, ‘Oh, well, we had an issue.’ I’m learning about this an hour before the race,” he said. “No one panicked. There was no deep dive into this. I still didn’t know that there was anything amiss — certainly not from St. Pete. So, you know, we fix all that. We go through the race. When I learned there was a real issue here, I go, ‘How is this possible? Who safeguards this stuff?’ And then I learn after the fact that this has been possible for anybody at any point. So it’s also not complex. It’s very simple. If you break down exactly what happened, it’s extremely simple. And it kind of baffled me that anybody could have done that. There was no sort of checks and balance in place. And I’m not trying to point the finger at everybody. It doesn’t absolve us from anything. But I was shocked to learn that there was no safeguard in place. It was just that this could have happened at any point, and no one knew about it.
“No one genuinely believed we had done anything wrong. No one was looking for something inaccurate. It’s not something that just jumps out like a silver bullet. It’s easy to, especially now learning how the software piece works, it’s something on the team side where it’s literally built into your preferences on your dash. There’s a digit there that literally sends this signal. I don’t think it’s something that we were looking for.”
Newgarden also addressed the question of how the irregularity at St. Pete was not spotted in the data studied by the drivers and engineers.
“That’s not data that you look at after the race,” he said. “I didn’t review any of that stuff after the race. I mean, it was a good weekend. I did my notes. I watched the race back. I didn’t assume anything was off, or anything was different. I mean, there’s a reason that Will didn’t use it. The only person in-car that was under the belief that there was a rule change was in the No. 2 car. You know, there’s a reason Scott only used it 1.9 seconds, too. I mean, he truly is just hitting it out of habit, which does happen. I think I hit the thing 29 times (in 2023).”
While Newgarden is keen to make his accountability for the situation clear, he also recognizes that he has some work to do to regain the trust of some of his competitors.
“I don’t know how you do that,” he admitted. “It is important to state. I think it’s the truth. I don’t know that anybody’s going to believe what I’ve told you here today. And that’s OK. I mean, it’s a crazy set of circumstances to try and just reason with. It’s certainly not going come from words, you know? It’s just going to take repetitive action. That’s all you can do is just repetitive action, and hopefully I can stand on that in the future. So however long it takes or how many years, if I’m given the time, I’ll just try and earn it through action.
“I saw (IndyCar president ) Jay Frye for the first time yesterday — he asked me to come see him, and I think he was just being nice. I think he wanted to be a friend. And I told Jay the story too, you know — I was like, ‘Jay, this is what happened.’ The saddest thing about it was, no one did this on purpose. And even me telling Jay the story, I could tell looking at him that even he was having a hard time believing it. I’m like, what are you going to do? If, if this guy has a hard time believing it, how is anybody going to believe it? And I can’t affect that. So after today I’m not going to concern myself with it, because I just can’t control it.”
While the St Petersburg disqualification puts Newgarden into an early hole with regard to his championship aspirations, he said that the series was correct to strip him of the win.
“I do believe the integrity of the series is absolutely paramount,” he said. “You know, the series has to hold everybody accountable regardless of the circumstance, regardless of the intent, and they’ve done the right thing by trying to throw the book at us. They should. It just doesn’t matter what the intent was. If you broke a rule, you broke a rule, and you should suffer the consequences and this series has to uphold that standard. It makes me proud that I’m a part of this series that does that — that’s a series I want to be a part of. So I think the penalty’s fair. It’s crushing. I mean, I’m going to look back on it too and say, ‘Well, I don’t want that win on my books either.’ I don’t want it. I’m glad they’re taking it away. If it was tainted, then I don’t want to be near it. And unfortunately it is.
“We hold ourselves to a really high standard. I mean, everybody knows that. And we have no room to deviate from that. So whether you meant to make a mistake or, you just did, it doesn’t matter, you know? If it’s by accident or by design, it’s not acceptable. And so it’s hard to wrestle with it when it happens, regardless of the circumstances. I can’t speak on Roger [Penske]’s behalf, but just from my side, I think we hold ourselves to a really high standard, and certainly, I fell short of it, and I just apologize to anybody that we’ve offended with it. I can’t say much more than that. I’m sorry it happened.”
Team Penske is working on a contract extension that would keep Josef Newgarden in the No. 2 Chevy after his current contract expires at the end of this year. “I think we are making good progress,” Team Penske president Tim Cindric told RACER. Having …
Team Penske is working on a contract extension that would keep Josef Newgarden in the No. 2 Chevy after his current contract expires at the end of this year.
“I think we are making good progress,” Team Penske president Tim Cindric told RACER.
Having joined Penske in 2017, Newgarden has reached the highest level of success in IndyCar after winning championships in 2017 and ’19, and the Indianapolis 500 in 2023. With a desire to receive a greater level of compensation, Newgarden is known to have explored free agency, and as RACER learned last weekend from one of his potential destinations in the paddock, the embattled 33-year-old is tipped to stay with the Cindric-led team in 2025. It’s unclear whether the Tennessean is seeking a one- or multi-year extension with the team.
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Newgarden’s title hopes took a shot this week when he was stripped of his win at the opening race in St. Petersburg after he was found to have illegally used IndyCar’s push-to-pass system when it was disabled for other teams during starts and restarts.
The disqualification demoted Newgarden from first in the championship to 11th entering Sunday’s race at Barber Motorsports Park.
Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin have been disqualified from the IndyCar Series race at St. Petersburg. Pato O’Ward is the new winner.
In a shocking development, there is a new winner for the NTT IndyCar Series’ opening race at St. Petersburg. On Wednesday morning, the IndyCar Series announced that Team Penske drivers [autotag] Josef Newgarden[/autotag] and Scott McLaughlin have been disqualified for violating Push-to-Pass parameters at St. Petersburg. [autotag] Pato O’Ward[/autotag] is officially deemed the new winner.
Alongside Newgarden and McLaughlin, Team Penske driver Will Power has received a 10-point penalty. IndyCar investigated Team Penske after it found that each driver had the ability to use Push to Pass on starts and restarts during the warmup session in Long Beach. Newgarden and McLaughlin used it at St. Petersburg, while Power did not.
NEWS: #INDYCAR officials announce penalties for Team Penske, including disqualifications for the Nos. 2 and 3 entries, and a 10-point deduction for the No. 12, for violating Push-to-Pass parameters at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
The shocking move has O’Ward, Power, and Colton Herta on the podium at St. Petersburg. Newgarden now sits 11th (-45), while McLaughlin sits 29th (-74) in the point standings. This has a massive impact on the point standings, as Team Penske released a statement accepting the penalties for Newgarden, McLaughlin, and Power.
To properly grasp what’s in store for Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden as he explores free agency, we need to understand the seismic shift that’s recently occurred in the IndyCar driver marketplace, how it will influence Newgarden’s value, and whether …
To properly grasp what’s in store for Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden as he explores free agency, we need to understand the seismic shift that’s recently occurred in the IndyCar driver marketplace, how it will influence Newgarden’s value, and whether he will be on the move to a new team in 2025.
The story starts with Colton Herta, who’s said to have signed a five-year deal with Andretti Global that pays a market-leading $7 million per season.
Other than to tell RACER, “That sounds like a great number,” Herta hasn’t been interested in discussing his personal finances since that sum started making the rounds last year in the IndyCar paddock, nor has his team owner felt compelled to reveal the amount he pays his drivers. But it’s a vitally important number to know.
It’s changed the financial dynamic in the IndyCar paddock in ways that we haven’t seen since the 1990s, and with a few more high-profile drivers like Newgarden up for bid entering 2025, Andretti’s big spending has radically altered the way elite IndyCar drivers are approaching the negotiating table.
And to be honest, it doesn’t really matter if that starry number of $7 million is real. What is important to know is that Herta’s alleged annual income has become accepted as fact by many of his rivals, and that $7 million revelation has weaponized all significant contract discussions since that number came to light.
Regardless of what Colton Herta is actually making at Andretti Global, the perception of his current deal is already driving the conversation. Josh Tons/Lumen
His teammate Kyle Kirkwood received an extension last year that’s rumored to be worth $3.5 million and hew hire Marcus Ericsson is said to have negotiated something similar — in the $3 million range — to make Andretti Global the team with the highest average annual salaries in the series.
Herta’s huge-for-IndyCar deal is the new and leading dollar amount to seek, and that’s been a positive development for drivers. As recently as 2022, one IndyCar champion was being paid just $850,000, and for many of the best in the top half of the field, anywhere from $1.25-2.5 million was the well-established framework most teams were willing to work within for salaries.
In speaking with a few driver managers who look after some of IndyCar’s biggest earners, the massive infusion of money received by Andretti — an estimated quarter-billion dollars from his business partner Dan Towriss and the companies he leads — is what has allowed the team to double or triple what a Herta, Kirkwood, or Ericsson would have been paid prior to the nine-figure investment.
The knock-on effect has seen a single team move the driver salary bar to new heights and caused most of the drivers who aren’t in the upper tier of remuneration to use Andretti’s numbers as a bargaining tool.
“There’s definitely been an uptick triggered by the Andretti salary levels,” one veteran manager, who asked to not be named, told RACER. “They seem to be the ones who moved the goalposts. But it’s been atrocious with how poorly IndyCar drivers have been paid. In general, we haven’t seen salaries like this since the mid-to-late ’90s when Michael and those top guys were on close to $10 million. And those numbers have not been anywhere near that for a long time.
“Still, there’s maybe three or four guys on the big numbers and the rest aren’t, but they’re now trying to get there after seeing what Michael and Dan are paying people.”
Of all the key things to know about the $7 million rate for Herta, it’s how the sum has always been spoken of as an elevated retainer Andretti and Towriss paid for him to be the future leader of their Formula 1 team.
With the door to F1 currently welded shut for Andretti, Herta’s grand salary has become an outlier — a fantastical expenditure — in a series where the majority of teams aren’t ready to elevate the accepted $1.25-2.5 million to $3 million or more across the board.
“It’s not always that driver salaries match where the sport’s at,” said Pieter Rossi, who manages his son Alexander and others in the series. “I have to be really sensitive in my position because team owners need to be able to operate a team at a high level and the cost of doing business in motorsports has gone up in the last four years. Inflation has hit everywhere, teams have budgets, and it’s costing more to operate the cars to be at the same level to win races. And it doesn’t always necessarily match being able to pay a driver what they’re worth at that time. You hope it does.”
Between three-time Indy 500 winner and four-time IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti and his teammate, six-time IndyCar champion and 2008 Indy 500 winner Scott Dixon, the Chip Ganassi Racing drivers were regarded in the late 2000s, through their final on-track season together in 2013, as the two highest-paid drivers in IndyCar with rumored salaries in the $3 million range.
Dixon maintained that top-salary distinction afterwards, with something in the vicinity of $3.5 million spoken of as the best of his generation’s base annual retainer that’s carried into the 2020s.
The question facing drivers and teams today is whether the market can bear a widespread spike in retainers — one that would take the previous income peak paid only to the best few drivers and normalize it as the new standard sought by half the field.
“What I’m seeing in IndyCar at the moment is that salaries are definitely increasing,” Rossi added. “At the same time, it’s got to match with what the teams are able to pay at that given time because each owner has a different playbook. If you look at the top four teams in McLaren, Andretti, Ganassi and Penske, they all are able to succeed at a very high level, but they have a different playbook on how they approach things. Some teams don’t have enough to pay the top-line drivers. And then you have other teams that have the resources to that and are able to contract the drivers at a high level.”
It’s here where Herta’s recent F1-inspired income has been a blessing for some of his fellow IndyCar drivers who, with that giant rate to cite, have broken through the Dixon barrier and started to command salaries that match or exceed the six-timer’s income. All despite having achieved next to nothing when compared to Dixon.
And that’s where Newgarden’s situation is so thoroughly interesting.
Anecdotally, Penske has never been accused of paying his modern-day drivers more than the Dixons and Franchittis. Being in one of the best teams, with the ability to win multiple races every season, has often been mentioned as the tradeoff that comes with the below-market-rate salaries.
No one would dispute that Josef Newgarden continues to deliver at the highest level, but there is more to it to making the numbers add up for him, either with his current team or elsewhere. Jake Galstad/Lumen
The first grumblings of Newgarden wanting to be paid like Herta surfaced last summer, and unlike some of those who are currently earning more than Newgarden, his pair of IndyCar championships and Indy 500 win would easily qualify him to receive a new deal that reflects his accomplishments and value.
Of Newgarden’s realistic options, he has four teams to speak with that could pay a healthy salary and offer a chance to win multiple races, starting with Andretti Global, Arrow McLaren, Ganassi and Penske. Among the three that aren’t Penske, only one team — which spoke under the condition of anonymity — confirmed to RACER that contacted has taken place with Newgarden regarding a drive in 2025.
Never say never, but as the owner said of any desire Newgarden might harbor of receiving a financial windfall at Andretti, “I think he missed his window.”
With the downsizing from four cars to three and, critically, its multi-year deals with Herta, Kirkwood and Ericsson, the timing is off for a union of Andretti and Newgarden. With all three drivers locked into contracts through at least 2025, there’s no obvious path to join IndyCar’s richest team.
Not only does Andretti have no plans to go back to four cars next year, but it’s also highly unlikely it would pay Newgarden a huge Herta-size wage and commit another $8-10 million to field a car on his behalf. Is Newgarden among the best we’ve seen in the 2000s? Without a doubt. Would Andretti spend $15-17 million across a salary and car budget per year to have him? It’s not impossible, but it’s at the far end of being feasible.
Arrow McLaren has been mentioned aplenty as the most likely destination for Newgarden, but like Andretti, any hopes of tapping into McLaren’s deep bank account to receive a life-changing contract isn’t on the cards.
The team recently placed its big driver salary spend behind Pato O’Ward, whose new contract can pay up to $4.2 million per year if all the incentives are achieved. Although Newgarden would be worthy of a bigger contract, O’Ward is McLaren’s franchise IndyCar driver and it looks like it’s another case of missing the grand payout window.
While the team has as many as two seats it could need to fill if it doesn’t extend Alexander Rossi and David Malukas, Newgarden would need to come in around O’Ward’s level, which might not be that big of a bump to what he’s earning at Penske. In plain and simple terms, nothing close to that magical $7 million figure is waiting to be taken at Arrow McLaren.
And then there’s Ganassi, which has two of the three or four best drivers in IndyCar. Reigning champion Alex Palou is signed to a multi-year deal (we’ll go ahead and assume he’ll honor it) and Dixon is said to be on the books for another year or two which, like Andretti, means there’s no obvious car for Newgarden to drive next year and no $8-10 million car budget to go with whatever salary he’d want to command.
In time, Newgarden would be a perfect fit to take the baton from Dixon whenever Dixon decides to retire, but that time isn’t now, which would seemingly take Ganassi off the board. If he wants to consider a switch in a year or two, plenty of interest will be there.
There are two other factors are said to be associated with Newgarden, starting with his affinity for signing short-term deals, which could be something he uses to his advantage if he elects to stay with Penske and resume testing the market a year from now. As well, Penske is also understood to be fond of driver contracts that run through April or May, which could lead to some swift decision making on Newgarden’s behalf.
Penske would have no problem attracting drivers to step into Newgarden’s seat, with the likes of Christian Lundgaard being available after 2024, and Rinus VeeKay is also shopping for a front-running opportunity once he completes his contract in September. Callum Ilott is untethered for 2025, and if Penske wanted to promote from within, he has ex-Formula 1 driver and IMSA champion Felipe Nasr on the Porsche Penske Motorsport IMSA GTP payroll and IMSA champion Dane Cameron to draw from.
And there are other great teams for Newgarden to consider, but after the top four, the available dollars and likelihood of being a title contender fall off rather quickly, which simplifies his realistic options.
So, with Andretti, McLaren, and Ganassi looking like longshots to deliver the salary hike Newgarden is hoping for, most of the team owners and drivers I’ve spoken to think he’ll push for more money and end up staying with Penske.
Leaving is indeed a possibility, but most of the likely destinations say the departure would have to be for reasons other than great financial enrichment. The silly season, which never seems to end, is going to be interesting to follow in the months ahead.
It’s only one race, but if Team Chevy has this kind of horsepower, torque, and fuel mileage to offer for the rest of the IndyCar season, the General Motors brand will be hard to beat. Josef Newgarden, Pato O’Ward, Scott McLaughlin, and Will Power …
It’s only one race, but if Team Chevy has this kind of horsepower, torque, and fuel mileage to offer for the rest of the IndyCar season, the General Motors brand will be hard to beat.
Josef Newgarden, Pato O’Ward, Scott McLaughlin, and Will Power used their 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6 Chevys to trounce the field throughout Sunday’s 100-lap Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg as they locked out the top four positions, with the winner from Team Penske turning his pole position into a victory that came with the race’s fastest lap and 92 laps in the lead.
“I think we had some deficits last year. There’s no doubt. You can’t hide from that,” Newgarden told RACER. “But we also had some tremendous strengths. We leaned on a huge win at the Indy 500, we were very strong on ovals. I think you’re seeing a good ebb and flow between the manufacturers, which you want to see as a competitor and as a fan.
“For us, we would love to have it easy, but we want a strong competition between the manufacturers, and I think you had that last year. Maybe we were a little bit weak in some parts that we needed to bring up, and I think today, as I assess the race and as I assess the weekend, I think you see a lot of parity.
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“I would say there was more parity than last year here. I think Honda looked pretty strong at this event for the [2023] opener [which it won]. I think this weekend we looked even in a lot of respects, but we certainly have strength on our side that we can lean on now. This is one example right now, one data point. Let’s keep going a couple more rounds.”
Although Chevrolet won last year’s Manufacturers’ championship, its rivals at Honda took the higher-profile Drivers’ championship, and it’s here where the Bowtie’s teams and drivers decided it was time for the car company to double down and try to rectify the situation. Based on Sunday’s performance, Team Chevy was listening.
“I’ve got to say, Chevrolet, they work hard every off-season,” Newgarden added. “They worked really hard this off-season. We were hard on ourselves. It’s not just them. We had to really improve our side on the chassis, and we were hard on them, too. We said, ‘We’ve got to make all of these things better,’ and they delivered in spades.
“You ask for the menu, and you don’t get the whole menu [of improvements]. They somehow gave us the whole menu. It’s pretty cool. They did a great job, and it makes me very encouraged for 2024.”
The art of extreme fuel saving was on display during Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, which was won by polesitter Josef Newgarden. The art of extreme entertainment conservation was also deployed over 100 laps where not much happened …
The art of extreme fuel saving was on display during Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, which was won by polesitter Josef Newgarden.
The art of extreme entertainment conservation was also deployed over 100 laps where not much happened at the season-opening IndyCar race as most drivers spent the afternoon following each other and making a limited number of passing attempts while they engaged the throttle pedal as infrequently as possible.
Despite the long stretches of boredom, Newgarden and Team Penske used the event to show how far the organization has come since the end of the 2023 season. Newgarden led 92 laps and ran away and hid from Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward to win by 7.9s. Teammate Scott McLaughlin was third, 8.4s back from Newgarden, and the Penske trio was completed by Will Power, who rounded home 9.0s arrears.
Together, the quartet delivered a statement of Chevrolet’s intent for the season as the Bowtie went 1-2-3-4 to start the defense of its manufacturers’ championship.
“It did feel comfortable today,” Newgarden said. “I had a lot of fun. Early on in the race, I said I was going. I’m not going to wait around. It’s been a process for us to come back and be better in areas we needed. We cleaned up our game and worked at the level we need to be.”
Andretti Global’s Colton Herta was the top Honda representative on the day, leading one lap on the way to fifth, many corners behind with a 10.2s deficit to the winner.
Elsewhere, Meyer Shank Racing front-row starter Felix Rosenqvist fell to seventh at the finish after enduring a slow pit stop and small drivetrain issues. A.J. Foyt Racing’s Santino Ferrucci was solid on his way to 11th, and among the many rookies, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Kyffin Simpson was clean from start to finish and was rewarded with the second-fastest race lap and 14th at the finish line.
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The race opened with a mostly clean run through the first few corners; Christian Lundgaard was the only driver to suffer when contact from behind cut his right-rear tire and sent the Dane to pit lane for a replacement, which dropped him to last.
Once the field was settled, the 27 drivers went into fuel-saving mode for the remainder of the first stint. Newgarden held a gap over Rosenqvist that sat in the 1.5s range, and behind him, Herta ran a steady 4.0s behind the leader.
The first caution of the race flew on lap 27 when Ganassi’s Marcus Armstrong slid into the barriers and broke his rear suspension while running 10th. The crash prompted the field—minus Lundgaard — to head to the pits.
A slow pit-box exit for Newgarden allowed Rosenqvist and Herta to jump ahead and take the restart behind Lundgaard on lap 31 and Newgarden pounced on Herta—O’Ward and McLaughlin also followed through—as Rosenqvist was held up behind Lundgaard.
Newgarden motored past Rosenqvist on lap 33 to take second on the road and O’Ward took third as Rosenqvist fell to fourth. McLaughlin and Herta completed the top six.
The next caution was needed on lap 35 because of Sting Ray Robb pulling off in Turn 1. He climbed from the car and pointed to the right-front corner as the AMR Safety Team approached. Lundgaard pitted under caution and resumed at the back of the field as Newgarden reclaimed the lead.
The lap 38 restart set another fuel-saving stint in motion and by the halfway point, Newgarden held 1.2s over O’Ward, 2.2s over Rosenqvist, 3.8s over McLaughlin, 4.7s over Herta, and 6.4s over Andretti’s Marcus Ericsson as the leaders were 100 percent successful in their attempts to not pass each other.
Ericsson’s strong run met its end on lap 53 as he pitted and the Andretti crew removed the engine cover. By lap 65 we had the first takers for final pit stops; Newgarden came in at the end of the lap after building 3.6s over O’Ward. Herta stayed out to stop at the end of lap 66 and jumped Rosenqvist and McLaughlin to claim third behind Newgarden and O’Ward.
McLaughlin took the position from Rosenqvist and on lap 69, Ganassi’s Linus Lundqvist—just like teammate Armstrong—crashed at Turn 10, but this wasn’t a solo incident. A hit from behind by Romain Grosjean sent the rookie into the barriers, which broke his rear wing and stalled the car. Running 13th at the time of the hit, Lundqvist was refired and he drove to the pits for repairs. Grosjean, who inherited 13th, was given a drive-through penalty which dropped him to 21st. A transmission issue later in the run parked Grosjean for the rest of the race.
The lap 73 restart saw the leaders hold station with Newgarden in front of O’Ward, but a sliding Herta surrendered third to McLaughlin and then fourth to Power. Lap 76 saw a pass for sixth as Palou demoted Rosenqvist.
The remainder of the race went without changes up front as Newgarden cruised to the win.
Josef Newgarden wins the NTT IndyCar Series race at St. Petersburg. Check out the full results, race recap from St. Petersburg!
The start of the 2024 NTT IndyCar Series season couldn’t have gone better for Team Penske. [autotag]Josef Newgarden[/autotag], who won the pole, also claimed the victory at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Newgarden led 92 of the 100 laps and earned 54 points. It was a dominant day for the driver of the No. 2 car, who appears to be one of the favorites for the championship.
Newgarden didn’t have much competition throughout the day as Pato O’Ward and Scott McLaughlin rounded out the podium. In fact, all three Team Penske drivers finished in the top 4 spots after Will Power finished in fourth place. The only other drivers to lead laps during the event were Christian Lungaard and Colton Herta.
The IndyCar Series won’t have another actual points race until April; however, there will be a $1 Million Challenge in two weeks. Newgarden will look to carry the momentum into the exhibition race and make a statement about his championship prospects
Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg finishing order:
Twelve months ago, Josef Newgarden went into the season opener at St. Petersburg with a new engineer in Australia’s Luke Mason, and by the time the season was over, the Tennessean and the Aussie had four wins to their credit, including the …
Twelve months ago, Josef Newgarden went into the season opener at St. Petersburg with a new engineer in Australia’s Luke Mason, and by the time the season was over, the Tennessean and the Aussie had four wins to their credit, including the Indianapolis 500.
But the one item that was missing was a pole position, which the duo promptly rectified in their first opportunity in 2024.
“He’s great. I’ve been fortunate in my career; I’ve got to work with just tremendous talent every single year I really had no weak points,” Newgarden told RACER after putting his name on his 17th IndyCar pole at St. Petersburg. “And Luke, he’s been an addition to that.”
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A race engineer is more than someone who fiddles with the suspension and wing settings on a race car. In most team structures, they are the head coach of the entry, the director of the pit crew, and can be a therapist, motivational speaker, and a friend to the driver. In Mason, Newgarden has found a race engineer who checks many of those boxes.
“He’s another person that to me is an absolute rockstar race engineer,” the two-time IndyCar champion added. “And anybody that knows what a race engineer really is, would understand the significance of that. You can be a technically savvy individual, you can be a good engineer, but a race engineer requires something just a little different. And I think Luke excels at it.
“He’s in a great spot. He’s certainly bringing a great dynamic to our team and in lot a lot more ways than just one. I want the best for him. I want to see him win a bunch of races and I want to do that together.”
