Luke Mason has been Josef Newgarden’s race engineer for all of six races. The Australian has won two of them, including the Indianapolis 500, before he’s reached the halfway point of his first season as an IndyCar race engineer.
“It’s the Indy 500!” Mason told RACER, his lips quivering from the rush of adrenaline and emotion while standing next to Indy’s yard of bricks. “You spend your whole life working towards achieving this one goal, and having done it now, I’m speechless. It’s such a good crew, this group of people; not just the No. 2 car or theNo. 3 or the No. 12, but the whole crew. Everyone back at the shop; it’s been a big goal. It’s no secret that we haven’t done well enough here at the Speedway.
“Coming into this year after a championship victory last year, it was priority number one to get Roger’s 19th win.”
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Among the most remarkable aspects of Newgarden’s win was his steady and unstoppable march forward from 17th on the grid. According to Mason, he had one of the easiest days imaginable on the timing stand thanks to nailing the perfect chassis setup for the American to drive into victory lane.
“We didn’t touch the front wing,” he said. “We didn’t touch tire pressures all day. We kept asking Josef if he wanted changes and were trying to make sure that we were in the right window for the shootout at the end. And he kept saying everything was fine, so we just didn’t touch it all day. The plan going in was to be the best on pit road. We got the best driver in the car, so every stop, we’d pick up two or three spots and then another two or three spots. We were ahead of schedule by halfway.
“Pretty happy with that. And obviously we’ve got to be fair; there’s a lot of good cars that got taken out in various situations. At the same time, we’ve got to capitalize and we knew that if we put him in a position to go drive and steal this victory, he was going to do it. He’s Josef Newgarden, and that’s what he does best.”
