Josef Newgarden on breakthrough Indy 500 win: ‘I was going to win or end up in the wall'
INDIANAPOLIS – Josef Newgarden is the antithesis of Ricky Bobby and his 'If you ain't first, you're last,' mantra. Or, rather, was.
Because for so much of his championship-contending Team Penske tenure, the polished, proper, at times rehearsed and robotic two-time IndyCar champion was always in it for the long game. Bad first race of the year, or first month, or even first half a season? There was never a time when Newgarden felt as if he was down-and-out. Amidst some of his slow starts and up-and-down title pursuits, Newgarden always knew there was time to try again, get it right and come back stronger.
But that’s not how the Indianapolis 500 works. The 200-lap battle is waged within a few hours. One mistake can send you crashing down to earth in a mangled heap of carbon, metal and rubber.
That failure, time and time again, can be debilitating. And it’s why, when asked about his wife’s reaction to his breakthrough moment in the Indianapolis 500, Newgarden could no longer keep it together. As someone who routinely fails to compartmentalize his work and who lets that passion bleed into his everyday life, Newgarden came to terms in an instant Sunday evening with the pain he’d put himself through, longing, willing, over-studying and stressing over a victory that sometimes seemed as if it would never come. Then too, he realized the burden it put on Ashley.
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“She’s probably got the toughest job in our family, and not just because she looks out for everything and helps make my world go round but she sees the negative impact,” he said. “She sees the heartbreak more than anyone else, so she knows…”
Newgarden’s voice begins to crack.
“…she knows what that’s like.”
And now, Newgarden’s lip begins to quiver and his eyes well, and after a 30-minute press conference he’s spent throwing sly jabs and cracking jokes, being the perfect spokesperson and relishing in his success, he’s struggling to keep it together.
“I’m just happy we were able to finally win it. She knows that, too.”
'We don't show up here to be average'
The 500 is incredibly different than the season-long battle Newgarden has made his calling card during his Team Penske tenure, which he kicked off in 2017 with his first of two championships. Since his second one in 2019, Newgarden has finished runner-up three consecutive times. And as gutting as those season finales feel, where he’s finished 1st, 2nd and 2nd and lost those titles by a combined 70 points, you get the sense that there’s acceptance that season just wasn’t theirs.
But 500s? They’re different.
“You can have a good qualifying. You can have a good Fast Friday. You can have a good Carb Day, and if you’re not good on race day, it’s all for nothing. That’s what makes Indy so terribly pressure-filled – and terribly difficult, too,” Newgarden said. “And I think that’s what has made it so special today to win it.
“On the flipside, when you don’t win it, that’s what makes it so demoralizing. You pack up, and you say, ‘We lived here for three weeks, and we put everything we had into this, and it didn’t work out.’ It just breaks your heart.
“It’s broken my heart every year. And so I feel amazing now that it didn’t break my heart this year.”
In fact, it had broken Newgarden’s heart as many times as it had any eventual 500. Only Sam Hanks – who nearly retired after the 1956 500 and then won in 1957 on his 12th try before retiring on the spot – and Tony Kanaan – whose run of 500 heartbreak, and his resilience to it, turned him into a fan favorite before winning his 12th start in 2013 – had come up short in their first 11 Indy 500 and still found Victory Lane.
And almost eerily so, Newgarden’s 12th May started so similarly to years’ past. His No. 2 Chevy crew came out firing during April’s Open Test, proved strong in early practice days and received praise as a legitimate contender for the first time since Team Penske’ last 500 win in 2019. Since then, the team had logged just two top-10s across 11 500 starts from 2020-22.
Last weekend, his team’s decision to pull their time to try and jump from 16th to the Fast 12 (and instead, falling to 17th) gave reason to worry that Penske’s race cars weren’t all too special.
“We don’t show up here to be average,” Newgarden said Sunday. “Indy doesn’t owe anybody anything. It doesn’t matter how many 500s you have. It doesn’t matter what team you are. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. It isn’t an easy place to succeed at.
“And when you don’t, I’ll be honest, it’s terrible. It’s mentally-draining to be here for three weeks and just know you really only have one opportunity, and it comes down to today, and that’s the day you’ve got to be perfect. I don’t necessarily subscribe to the fact that if you don’t win the 500, your career is a failure. But I think a lot of people really view this race with that lens. It’s impossible not to recognize that or absorb that from people when you’re here."
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Perhaps part of Newgarden’s success came from strategizing less in the leadup to Sunday. Maybe, instead the mental grind he’d typically put himself through, Newgarden would just trust his talent and instincts – treat the 500 less like a plan to execute and more of something to just go out and ‘do.’
After just one pit sequence Sunday, Newgarden was already 9th up from 17th. By the halfway mark he was 5th. From there, it wasn’t so much about what he did but the mistakes others made and his uncanny ability to take advantage of them.
When he saw a vulnerable Felix Rosenqvist coming down the front-straight with just under 20 laps to go, Newgarden pounced in a way that pushed Rosenqvist into the marbles followed by the Turn 1 wall.
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On the Lap 193 restart, Newgarden leapt from 3rd to 1st before Turn 1, sending Pato O’Ward to 3rd and he forced a pass back of Marcus Ericsson two-wide into Turn 3 still with more than seven laps to go. Given the race’s history, there would be no red flag at that point, with more than five laps left, that shouldn't made O'Ward feel like that dive for 2nd-place was a make-or-break move.
Except, of course, for a red flag that followed his own crash.
On the restart with four to go, Newgarden didn’t force anything while leading down the front stretch. As cars careened into each other behind him, he gave up the lead but it’s not as if there was anything much for him to do there. Ericsson inched ahead as the yellow lights flashed.
And on that final restart at the beginning of the 200th lap, Newgarden found precisely the time to lay all that pent up emotion on the line.
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“If I had a little better jump, I probably would have passed Marcus in Turn 1, but maybe that wouldn’t have been right. I think it all comes down to the mentality of getting the lead at all costs,” Newgarden said. “If it doesn’t work out, if something goes wrong, that’s okay. But I think that’s the right approach to try and win the race.
“I just said, especially after 2019, where I had an opportunity to win and fell short, ‘If I’m ever in a position again to win, I’m not coming back with a top-5 result. I just don’t care what happens.’ You come here to win the race, and we’re going to do that. I wasn’t looked to take anyone else out of the race, but I was going to put my car on the line to win. I was either going to win the race, or I’d end up in the wall. I wasn’t here to finish 2nd, 3rd or 4th today."
And that’s what Newgarden did – on a day, week and month in which he stopped fretting over the impossibility of conquering the most prestigious race in motorsports, as they say, the track finally chose Roger Penske’s prototype of a ‘perfect’ driver.
“With the red flags and everything, it could have been anybody’s race,” Penske said Sunday evening. “But I think Newgarden showed what he’s really made of today. He was, I think, confident but yet cautious at the end, and when it was time to go, he made it happen.”
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indy 500: How Josef Newgarden changed his proper, polished ways to win
