How growing up around Nashville shaped Indy 500 champion Josef Newgarden's IndyCar career

A visit to a local barbershop with his mother when he was going on 12 years old was the first step Josef Newgarden took toward Victory Lane at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Toward his two IndyCar championships. Toward his 29-and-counting victories on that circuit.

Newgarden and his mother Tina took that fateful trip to a strip mall in Hendersonville that fateful day in 2002, just shy of the boy's birthday.

An unplanned detour to a neighboring skateboard shop followed the hair appointments. There, a lime green, motorized scooter caught the fancy of the boy who would watch auto racing on television with his father and his grandfather.

"No one really knew about them," Newgarden said of the scooters, which he soon began to race with his neighborhood friends. "Just the coolest thing I've ever had in my life because it was motorized and I could tinker with it."

Twenty-one years after his mother bought him that scooter, Newgarden found himself in the middle of a milk-drinking celebration with a dairy farmer after winning the Indianapolis 500 in May. Twelve-year-old Newgarden could have only imagined and never could have imagined at all.

This weekend that trip to that strip mall brings Newgarden back the streets of Nashville, just outside the 32-year-old's hometown, for Sunday's Music City Grand Prix. There he will continue his chase for his third IndyCar title. He's currently second in points.

'The neighborhood didn't appreciate us'

Newgarden knew convincing his parents to let him drive a go-kart was a no-go.

"My parents were very safety-conscious when I was growing up," he said. "Even just having a bicycle was a big deal."

So he happily settled on a scooter. He soon convinced his friends to do the same and soon the group began riding together and racing one another.

"I'm sure the neighborhood did not appreciate us, but we just had a ton of fun," he said. "I was just trying to figure out any way to get into motorsports. This was like my entry point."

Before long Newgarden was modifying his scooter and snooping around online, trying to figure out how to further scratch his racing itch. That's when he discovered the International Scooter Association, a sanctioning body for scooter racing.

He convinced his father to drive him to race in places such as Phoenix and Las Vegas. That lasted about a year before his safety-conscious parents decided racing scooters on concrete tracks maybe wasn't the best idea.

"You're talking about parking lots of hotels and stuff," said Joey Newgarden, who serves as the CEO of his son's company, Racer of Tomorrow. "It became very apparent that was a stupid type of racing to be doing at that age. They are jumping off these jumps, going 20 feet in the air."

That led the Newgardens to New Castle, Indiana, just outside Indianapolis, and the go-kart scene, where Josef began making a name for himself during the family's frequent trips there in their Chevrolet Suburban.

Attention, detention

Saturday morning detentions led Josef Newberry to Golden Tate − and ping-pong.

The two were classmates and sometimes detentionmates during their time at John Pope II Preparatory School, where Newgarden attended for two years before racing took him to England.

While fate guided Newgarden to auto racing, Tate's fate took him to Notre Dame, where he was an All-American wide receiver, and to the NFL, where he won a Super Bowl and made the Pro Bowl during his 12-year career.

Two grades separated the two, Tate the elder. Ping-pong in the school cafeteria connected them.

"The headmaster took pity on them and knew they didn't want to mess around with any bookwork," Joey Newgarden said, "so he let them play ping-pong the whole time they were in detention."

"Golden was always known as our star athlete," Josef Newgarden said. "He was the best at track and field. He was the best at football. He was a baseball star."

Newgarden is the guy who has a day − July 31 − named in his honor in Tennessee after he became the first driver from the state to win the Indy 500. Something his parents never could have dreamed when they moved the family photography business from New York all those years ago.

From books to TV to video games

Auto racing led Newgarden to England, where he honed his skills and finished his final two years of high school virtually. Where many times he nearly gave up racing because he wasn't sure where funding would come from.

"We kind of did it more on a bluff and a dare with credit cards and made it work," his father said.

There, as an 18-year-old, Josef Newgarden lived in a small apartment, rubbed elbows with some of the right people. Years later, in 2019 after he'd become a racing star, Newgarden did the same when he moved back to Tennessee and lived in an 800-foot apartment for two years while his house was being built just outside Nashville.

In England, Newgarden also dreamed of competing against some of his favorites, such as Dario Franchitti, Helio Castroneves, Jimmie Johnson and Fernando Alonso, which he now has.

"I've had the opportunity to run with greats from all over the world," he said. "Every now and then I get that pinch-me moment."

Auto racing also led Newgarden to being the subject of a children's book, "Josef the Indy Car Driver." To being a participant on the television series American Ninja Warrior. To his voice being used in a video game, Forza Motorsport, which Newgarden played as a teenager.

"Whenever you get opportunities like that they're automatic yeses," he said. "It's really a dream come true for somebody to be able to live it on one end and fast forward to the future and be a part of it.

"It's crazy. I'm so used to it now but it blows my mind when I think about it."

'I was going nuts'

Silence led Josef Newgarden to the finish line at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, his 12th crack at the Indy 500.

He was 100 feet from the start/finish line when the reality began to settle in, when he allowed himself to believe he was going to experience "the coolest victory ... in my career." Emotion poured from his pores. Snapshots began to take shape in his memory.

"It was all in fast-forward and it was all in slow motion at the same time," he said. "It happened so quickly but I remember everything so vividly."

The solo celebration inside his Team Penske car spilled into his cooldown lap.

"I was going nuts and was so ready for what that celebration was going to be because that's what makes the Indy 500 what it is."

Except his entire team had gone radio silent. They'd unplugged their radios.

"Everyone was quiet and I got no answer back," he said. "I had no one to talk to. I think they were freaking out."

THE 411: What to know about IndyCar star Josef Newgarden, a Nashville native

Celebrate good times

Newgarden kissed the bricks at Indy, his parents to his right and wife Ashley to his left. His team was there, too. He wore milk on his head and a wreath around his neck. He climbed through the fence and celebrated with some fans, an ode to one of his racing heroes, Helio Castroneves.

He'd finally done it. Another affirmation that the path that began at that skateboard shop so many years before was where Newgarden was meant to be. Multiple times he considered quitting the sport. Many times he wondered whether he'd raced his final race.

Newgarden played baseball and basketball for years growing up in Hendersonville. He gave them up in favor of racing. It's an occupation that requires him to spend 120-130 days a year on airplanes. To always be on the run, which is nothing new for Newgarden.

"He's been that way since first, second, third grade," his father said. "When it was recess or lunch time he and his buddies would always race to the door to see who could get there first."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden home in Nashville for IndyCar race