Defending champ Newgarden’s chances of IndyCar repeat bleak
Josef Newgarden’s chances of successfully defending his 2017 IndyCar Series title are slimmer than a hummingbird’s beak.
He and fellow Team Penske driver Will Power are in third place, 87 points behind leader Scott Dixon, going into Sunday’s Grand Prix of Sonoma. Nevada City native Alexander Rossi is 29 points behind in second place.
If Dixon finishes first or second, he’s the champ. If he’s third and Rossi wins, Dixon still could win by winning the pole Saturday and leading the most laps Sunday.
Newgarden, like Power, would have to win the race and hope Dixon finishes 24th or worse and Rossi 10th or worse, but the bonus points could alter things slightly.
Like that Meryl Streep-Alec Baldwin movie, it’s complicated.
Dixon has 598 points, Rossi 569 and Power and Newgarden 511 each. It’s a double-points race, so the winner gets 100 points, plus a possible four bonus points: one for leading at least one lap, one for winning the pole and two for leading the most laps.
It doesn’t help the challengers’ chances that Dixon has excelled at Sonoma. He has won there three times, including 2014 and ’15, and was fourth last year.
Newgarden and Power didn’t help themselves by finishing 10th and 21st, respectively, at Portland two weeks ago. Dixon twice scrambled back from deep in the pack to finish fifth and put himself in position to win his fifth championship. Newgarden has as many wins, three, as Dixon and Rossi, but the 27-year-old Tennessean went through a rough patch from mid-May to early June in his No. 1 Dallara Chevrolet. His eighth-place finish in the Indianapolis 500 was actually his best of five races during that stretch.
In a recent teleconference, he said it will be “a sad thing” to go through a final race at Sonoma Raceway. The series moves to Laguna Seca in Monterey next year. He won the pole and finished second at Sonoma last year to capture the title on the final day of the season.
“That’s going to be a sad thing because I’ve gotten the wonderful opportunity to race there for the last six years,” he said. “I’ve had some bad memories but also some really good memories from the place.”
At the same time, he said, “I’ve never been to Laguna. I’m excited for us to go there. I think that’s always been an iconic IndyCar venue. So I’m thrilled that we’re finally going to get a shot to race there.”
He placed 21st or worse in three of his first four races at Sonoma but was sixth and second the past two years. “In ’14 (a sixth), we sort of figured things out,” he said. “But it’s all situational. It depends on what team you’re with and where you’re at in your career.”
Last season was his first with the high-powered Penske organization after five years of driving for the various teams owned by Sarah Fisher and Ed Carpenter.
Briefly: It’s the series’ 14th straight year at Sonoma and the fourth straight year that the track will host the season finale. … Eight different drivers have won at the track since the series debuted in 2005. The only one to win three times other than Dixon was Power (2010, 2011, 2013). Simon Pagenaud, still another Penske driver, won at Sonoma the past two years.