Josef Newgarden finishes 15th after a disappointing day in Barber.
Two-time NTT IndyCar Champion Josef Newgarden was able only to finish 15th in Barber Motorsports Park, another disappointing race in a year that has been a rollercoaster of emotions for the Team Penske driver.
With only one win to his name, in Texas after a big battle with Pato O’Ward, this has not been the start of the season that he was looking for. And, even though his weekend in Alabama was looking promising, he could not keep up, while his teammates finished on the podium.
Newgarden qualified 7th, just shy of getting into the Firestone Fast Six, and started Sunday with a promising warmup, but his race became undone on the first lap.At turn 2, Newgarden made contact with Felix Rosenqvist, sending the Arrow McLaren spinning into the gravel. However, the Swede could recover to 9th place, while the No. 2 Penske was damaged with the hit.“It sure felt like it [the contact damaged the car]. It’s hard to say because right after this hit it felt like I had a right rear going down, so I radioed in and said, ‘Hey, check right rear pressure’. And it looked fine, there was nothing wrong with the pressure. But something else felt very odd.”Despite the issue, he continued pushing and eventually lead the race for six laps, while leading the 3-stoppers pack. But he lost the lead in lap 37 to his teammate and eventual race winner Scott McLaughlin.
But, as the race went on, his issue worsened and he could not keep his pace. Newgarden was able only to finish 15th.
“The story of the race was that when there were new tyres on the car, it was drivable.”, said Newgarden to NBC. “It was off, definitely the right to left asymmetrically off, but it was drivable on new tires. And that was masking it.
“The problem was the left rear was getting destroyed, which is not the tyre that was hit. But whatever was going on over here, was having some effect over there. We just couldn’t hang on at all and it went bad.
“I just wish we had the car that we had in warmup, and we would have been just fine. But this was just evil. Just an evil-handling car. We were literally just holding on the whole race. Every second after was just a disaster and what a shame because obviously, we had the winning strategy.
“It was a great day for Team Penske so I am obviously happy for the team, but we were in position and another one just gets away. This one got away pretty badly. So, very demoralising for the whole group.”
