The reigning champion of the Indy 500 began his twelfth season in IndyCar in style with a very dominant weekend in St. Petersburg.
Newgarden secured on Saturday pole position with only hundreds of a second of advantage over Felix Rosenqvist in second place. The 33-year-old went on to win on the next day, leading for 92 laps out of the total 100 completed at the street circuit.
The American driver broke down the events and feelings which led him to his first win of the 2024 season in the post-race press conference, admitting that, while it wasn’t an easy feat, he had had a good feeling at the track
“It never is. It did feel — I don’t want to say it felt easy. It felt comfortable today. Really, really comfortable. I had a lot of fun.
“I sort of told myself before going into the race, I sort of want to let it be, not overstep, and then early on in the race, I’m like, I’m going. I’m not here to wait around. We’re going to win this race.”
The 2023 season had turned out to be not as successful as the previous one for Penske aside from the oval success, and it means a lot for Newgarden to be able to perform again at a very high level on this street circuit, where he has won three times in his whole career.
He credit the team and Chevrolet for making vital gains, too.
“Just really thankful to the team for the effort they’ve put in all year, I should say the entire off-season to get to this point.
“It’s been a big process for us to try and come back and be better in areas that we were weak last year, and I touched on it earlier in the weekend, but Chevrolet has done a tremendous job for us. They’re a huge part of the equation.
“They’re a big lift for us coming into this weekend, and I think on the team side, we’ve also lifted our game and cleaned up a lot of areas where we were maybe not at the level we needed to be.”
The team owned by Roger Penske, who has last won the championship in 2022 with Will Power, had a very strong opening round, as Newgarden shared the podium with teammate and former Bus Bro Scott McLaughlin, while Power finished P4.
“It all just came together today. Great start of the year. Obviously we had strength because looking at my teammates, we’re sitting first, third and fourth.
“I think that’s really encouraging for the rest of the season. It doesn’t tell the whole picture, but I think it’s encouraging.”
While he wasn’t actually expecting to win the race, he had felt comfortable enough to hope for a very positive result.
Newgarden admitted that he wasn’t sure whether he would be able to get the lead back after getting jumped at the first pit cycle by Rosenqvist and Herta.
“No, definitely not. But that’s kind of what I was talking about earlier. I went into the race comfortable with the fact that let’s just have a good day. If we don’t win, that’s not the end all, be all. Let’s just get good points.”
However, he quickly used the softer tyres to his advantage to pass them both and regain the lead, explaining how a killer mentality was important.
“As soon as we restarted, I’m like, I’m going past these guys. I don’t care if I wreck it. I’m just going to the front.
“I felt that today. So it was fun to have the killer mentality. I think you’ve got to have that in a lot of ways in any race that you’re in. It’s hard to survive without it. But no, I had no idea that we were just going to be able to get back out front and win.”
Out for blood in his quest for a third title in the series, the former Ed Carpenter Racing driver was extremely satisfied with the performance of his car.
“What was really obvious to me was that we had a strong car. Just all day, it made my job so much easier. It was really easy to drive today as far as the pace out of the car and getting consistency.
“I felt comfortable all day long, and it makes a big difference when you have a car like that,” he summed up.
Asked about the strategical decision to start the race on the black tyres, the two-time champion stated that it was a toss-up:
“It was not an easy decision. I think it could have gone either way. Certainly at the end of the race, I wish I would have had new reds still. I think it ended up being the preferred tire as you built into the race.
“But we didn’t know that 100 percent. We were sort of guessing in a lot of ways coming out of warmup. It’s cooler conditions, and you’ve only got one run on a set of tires and you’re sort of guesstimating what you think the dropoff and grip level is going to be.”
With the short amount of time allotted to adapt the set-up of the cars to race configuration, ultimately they opted for running a safer strategy instead of banking on the alternate tyres in the last stint. It was a different story for the other two Penske cars, however.
“We felt like the primary was a safer choice to start with, and we didn’t want to bank on using the red necessarily at the end. I think it was conservative to use it in the middle. It ended up working out for us.
“We had enough position at the end that we weren’t under threat, but if Scott was closer or one of these other cars at the end on green tyres, we could have lost the race because of that, because I think it was the preferred tyre in the second and third stint.
“Now that we know that, we’re going to probably utilize that a little bit differently going forward. I know everybody is going to learn from it,” added the Nashville native, already looking forward to the next track action at Thermal in a couple of weeks.
The Penske driver also discussed fuel management on the day, mentioning that he never really struggled with sticking to the goal set by his team at the end of the race.
Nonetheless, it was a race dominated by lifting and coasting, leading to a lack of wheel-to-wheel action at various points during the day.
“I think the most enjoyable part about that last 20 laps was I never turned up. I was like, we’re hitting a number and the number is probably getting easier. We just never adjusted it. It was like, let’s just go. By go, I mean we’re just going to keep the same program.
“That was really encouraging. That’s what I spoke about earlier. My car was just so — it seemed simple today to drive it fast. It’s not always like that. Sometimes you can be really fast but you’re working overtime to produce the speed.”
Newgarden had a lovely day at the office, as he was able to just control the race with his car no. 2 in a very dominant way, just like he has done in the past at Iowa:
“I wasn’t working overtime today. I was working hard but just kind of standard hard. It was just really enjoyable to be able to feel that way. I just felt in control of things in a lot of respects.
“It’s not easy. There was definitely touch — at the end I think it was touch and go with the greens because they were the preferred tire for sure, but we just had enough positioning on the field that I feel like we were in a good spot and we could close it,” he concluded.
