IndyCar:Series leader Newgarden gets the pole at Long Pond

LONG POND, PA.— Josef Newgarden gets a kick out of anyone who considers the IndyCar championship race limited to two or three drivers. The 2017 series champion counts a field four or five deep all chasing him for first as the season winds down.

Newgarden, first in the standings, took the pole at Pocono Raceway after rain washed out qualifying and set the field on points. Newgarden holds a 16-point lead over Alexander Rossi, who also starts Sunday’s race on the front row. With four races left, Indianapolis 500 champion Simon Pagenaud is 47 points back while reigning series champion Scott Dixon trails by 62 points.

Rossi won last year in a race marred by the wreck that paralyzed Guelph, Ont., native Robert Wickens from the waist down. Dixon won in 2013.

“Take your time. As we saw last year, you don’t want to take too big of a risk on that first lap,” said Will Power, a two-time Pocono winner. “You’ve got to make smart decisions on superspeedways.”

The championship race is tight, the margin for error is thin and the stretch run starts at the 21⁄ mile tri-oval track that has courted danger in recent seasons.

“I prefer to be in front,” Newgarden said. “I think it’s always better to be in the lead because then you can control it more so than chasing.”

Newgarden has his No. 2 Chevrolet on the right kind of track. Pocono will be the fourth of five oval races in IndyCar this season. Team Penske has thrived on ovals, with Newgarden winning at Texas and Iowa and Pagenaud winning the Indianapolis 500. Newgarden has two runner-up finishes at Pocono and has scored five top-fives overall since IndyCar returned to the track in 2013.

“People will be like, the championship is wide open now, because it got close,” Newgarden said. “And then it would open up again and people would be like, these are the two front-runners. It just yo-yos all year.”

Newgarden led the points in the final five weeks of his championship season. The series follows Pocono with races at Gateway, Portland and the season wraps at Laguna Seca in Monterey, Calif. Like the Indy 500, the finale is worth double points.

“It’s going to change over these next four events, one way or the other,” Newgarden said.