Newgarden Wins Again At Barber
For the second time in three years, Josef Newgarden leaves Alabama as a champion. The Nashville product earned his first-ever IndyCar win two years ago while driving for CFH Racing. Today, he won his fourth IndyCar race overall and his first while driving for Roger Penske. It took Simon Pagenaud a year and three races for him to win his first at Team Penske. It took Newgarden just three races to pay The Captain back for hiring him. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say that it won’t be the last.
Granted, he was the beneficiary of Will Power having a tire puncture late in the race but that’s what you do. You put yourself in a position to to win when the situation presents itself – and that’s exactly what happened.
Newgarden started the race in seventh position. It didn’t take long for him to move up the order. Before I knew it, he had worked his way up to second and spent the majority of the race following Power. In the last half of the race, it appeared that Scott Dixon had something for Newgarden. Power, Newgarden and Dixon were riding around together and Dixon was closing.
When Spencer Pigot spun in Turn Six, bringing out the second of two caution periods – the leaders pitted. When they came back out, Dixon got out ahead of Newgarden. But Newgarden made a great pass at the west end of the course and was back in second. Shortly thereafter, Power suffered his puncture and Newgarden took the lead and that was it.
This was a popular victory with the locals, since Nashville is just three hours up the road. I imagine it will resonate well with most fans. Josef Newgarden is quickly becoming one of the most marketable faces of IndyCar. He is very popular among fans. From what I gather, he s also popular among his fellow competitors.
Congratulations to Josef Newgarden. I think he might start getting used to this. Here are a few shots from victory lane of the celebration that followed.
That will do it for us here at the track. We are going to get on the road, but I will have my usual Monday morning race re-cap – so please check back Monday morning. Thanks for following along all weekend and check back Monday.
George Phillips
Oilpressure 
April 23, 2017 at 8:35 pm
That was a heck of a race. Newgarden is one tough driver and the Penske Chevys surprised me. They were up front all day long.