Nashville’s Newgarden ready for another shot at Music City
NASHVILLE — Josef Newgarden can cap a week that started with the state of Tennessee proclaiming a day in his honor by taking a big step closer to a third IndyCar Series championship.
Standing in his way is Sunday’s Music City Grand Prix.
It’s his home race, but it has proven quite a challenge the first two times around.
“It’s a unique opportunity in that I only get one shot at that every year,” the 32-year-old Team Penske driver said. “Kind of like the Indy 500.”
Newgarden won the Indianapolis 500 in May, and he’s tied with series points leader Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing with four wins this season after sweeping a doubleheader two weeks ago in Iowa, IndyCar’s most recent stop.
Notably, though, all 29 of the Nashville native’s wins have come on ovals, and the Music City GP is a long road course.
Newgarden’s best finish in the event came last year, when he started and finished sixth. This 2.1-mile circuit with 11 turns on downtown streets has proven very challenging for all drivers, with seemingly more crashes than green flag racing over the first two years.
Newgarden said street courses can always be a little chaotic. Nashville has the IndyCar Series’ longest street race with 80 laps and 168 miles, and it’s a bumpy layout highlighted by drivers going back and forth across the bridge over the Cumberland River.
“Surviving the chaos is always important,” Newgarden said. “It’s exciting when it’s chaotic. But for us, it’s very stressful, and you’ve got to keep a cool head, so that if something changes mid-race, you’ve got to be OK with that and you’ve got to be very flexible. So I think that’s what Nashville demands of everybody.”
Palou is chasing his second series championship in three years with Ganassi before moving to Arrow McLaren next season. Since 2008, the points leader with five races left has won the series championship eight times, including Palou in 2021. The 26-year-old Spaniard has led this season’s points standings after eight of the first 12 races.
Newgarden won his second series title in 2019, and he’s among the 13 drivers still mathematically eligible for this season’s title.
A win in Nashville would certainly help Newgarden. He enters Sunday’s race trailing Palou by 80 points, the secondlargest point difference since the top North American openwheel circuits were unified in 2008 and nearly twice the average 41.4-point lead with five races left in that span.
Scott McLaughlin, who is fifth in the standings, will start first after earning the pole position during Saturday afternoon’s qualifying session, which was delayed nearly four hours by rain.
Pato O’Ward will start second, followed by Colton Herta and Palou, with David Malukas fifth. Romain Grosjean, Will Power, Kyle Kirkwood, Newgarden and Alexander Rossi round out the top 10 of the 27-car field.
Harvick will start 22nd in final run at Michigan
BROOKLYN, Mich. — NASCAR veteran Kevin Harvick has fond memories of racing at Michigan International Speedway, where he won for the sixth time last summer.
Harvick is just not real interested in waxing poetically about the track before making one last run on it during Sunday’s Cup Series race.
“Michigan has been a great place for us, but when we leave, it’s over,” he said. “I’m not coming back.”
It’s not personal for Harvick. It’s simply business. While the 47-year-old Harvick may return to the Irish Hills region of southern Michigan as a TV analyst and potentially for his managing and marketing company, he has no plans to race on the 2-mile oval again in the future.
The 2014 Cup Series champion announced in January he’s retiring after this year.
“If I would’ve had it my way, I would’ve just been done last year,” he said.
Harvick came back because he knows it’s not just about him, considering the people on his team who count on him for their careers and the many fans who have helped him become rich and famous. On Friday night, Harvick signed autographs for several hundred people who lined up to meet and greet him at FireKeepers Casino — the title sponsor of the race — about 50 miles west of the speedway.
“That’s what this year is for,” he said. “Obviously, you want to end it well and win and be competitive.”
Harvick is No. 6 in the points standings, but he hasn’t finished first in a race since his 60th Cup Series victory, secured last year at Michigan, ended a 65-race winless drought. With four races remaining in the regular season, he may need one more win in the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 4 Ford to end his career in the playoffs for the 14th straight year.
“I don’t feel any pressure,” said Harvick, who was 22nd in qualifying Saturday.
Michigan native Brad Keselowski, a driver and co-owner for RFK Racing, said Harvick will leave behind “a great legacy in our sport. He’s won a lot of races, a Cup championship, Xfinity titles, truck titles as an driver and owner. That’s a pretty good mark.”
Christopher Bell won his second pole of the season, and the sixth of his career, turning a lap at 193.382 mph in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 Toyota. It’s the fastest qualifying performance since the 2020 Daytona 500, and Bell hopes his fast car can help him finish well after winding up 18th or worse in four of his last five races.
Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain will start second, followed by JGR rookie Ty Gibbs, who drives for his grandfather’s team.
Starting fourth is RFK’s Chris Buescher, who’s coming off a win at Virginia’s Richmond Raceway that gave him the 12th of 16 spots in the postseason field. Series points leader Martin Truex Jr., another JGR driver, will start the 200-lap race fifth in the 37-car field and is the betting favorite Sunday, according to FanDuel Sportsbook.