Newgarden’s first Indy win close to home
Josef Newgarden’s wait is over. To his relief, so is the race.
The 24-year-old Tennessean held off a hard-charging Graham Rahal on Sunday in the Indy Grand Prix of Alabama for his first Indy-Car Series victory.
“I’m so relieved that it’s over with,” Newgarden said. “I really wanted that race to end. It was just so stressful for me. Normally I’m pretty cool, and I felt cool out there, but it was just very stressful to run those laps and try to control that thing. We’ve been there before and things have gone wrong, and today nothing went wrong.”
Things started going right on the opening lap, in fact, when he moved all the way from fifth to second behind pole-sitter Helio Castroneves.
Newgarden led 46 of the 90 laps. He got his milestone win at Barber Motorsports Park a few hours from his hometown of Hendersonville, Tennessee, with most of the major drama coming behind him.
It was his first chance to celebrate a win since Indy Lights in 2011.
Canada’s James Hinchcliffe finished seventh.
Newgarden had posted secondplace finishes in each of the past two years before finally finishing up front for CFH Racing, a merger of Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing and Ed Carpenter Racing. He’d been off to a good start, including a seventh-place finish last weekend at Long Beach, before finally snaring a victory.
“I’m honestly just happy to win one,” Newgarden said. “I feel like we’ve been working forever for that.
“Everyone says you get that first one and it’s off your back and then you can just let it flow. I don’t know if it’s true yet, but it was going to happen at some point. This team is too good.”
Rahal finally slipped past Scott Dixon on the final lap after several tries, giving the American drivers a 1-2 finish.
“Eventually one of these days we’ll win one of these things,” Rahal said. “I hope everybody enjoyed the race because we were pushing there until the last second.”
Dixon had his sixth podium finish in as many years in Alabama at No. 3. He picked up the 36th win of his career at Long Beach, moving into possession of fifth place in the series. He still couldn’t quite break through in Alabama, saying it was about tire management, not fuel.
“It was definitely a tough day,” Dixon said. “It started horribly, we kind of got pushed around there at the start and just didn’t get a clean line there. We dropped like a rock. We bled the rear tires off on the first set and I think we were the first to stop in that situation. It kind of altered the day and how we could kind of deal with tires and fuel and all that kind of stuff.”
The clean-cut Newgarden — who Dixon called “a super nice guy” — then had a reason to celebrate with a bit of bubbly, whether he wanted it or not.
“We finally got him to have a sip of champagne,” Rahal said. “He doesn’t drink.”