Newgarden is IndyCar champ again
MONTEREY, Calif. — Josef Newgarden wrapped up his second IndyCar Series championship and burst into tears — an unexpected reaction for a steelynerved race car driver who rarely shows emotion.
The outburst took him by surprise and even shocked his fiancée, who had never before seen tears from Newgarden.
“I never cry. Ever. Even my fiancée is a little disturbed,” Newgarden said. “And it was a good cry.”
It was nearly two hours after his championship drive Sunday around Laguna Seca Raceway, and Newgarden was still a bit emotional. Talking about the moment he collapsed into his crew members arms while choking back tears, the 28-year-old Team Penske driver from Hendersonville, Tennessee, nearly broke down again.
“It just feels like a big weight. A big weight has been lifted,” Newgarden said.
He won his second championship in three years with a smooth drive in the IndyCar season finale, where he played it safe and watched rookie Colton Herta dominate on his way to victory lane.
Newgarden needed only to finish fourth or better to give Roger Penske his 16th IndyCar title. His drive clearly indicated he wouldn’t get aggressive and risk throwing it away, and he settled in for an eighth-place finish to beat teammate Simon Pagenaud by 25 points in the championship race.
It wasn’t the way he wanted to race, though.
“I knew the points in my head, I can tell you that, I knew exactly where we were,” Newgarden said. “I was very aware of what was going on. I thought we
were going down a rabbit hole and it wasn’t the hole for us to go down. We were shadowing (Alexander) Rossi, that’s what we were doing.”
The championship gave Team Penske a season sweep of the crown jewels of IndyCar — Pagenaud won the Indianapolis 500 in May for Penske’s record 18th victory in that event.
Pagenaud was frantically chasing Scott Dixon and Penske teammate Will Power in the closing laps to get a shot at Herta — Pagenaud’s only real chance at winning the title — but settled for fourth in what will still go down as a career-defining season. His sweep of all the events at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May earned him a contract extension that Penske confirmed before Sunday’s race was completed.
“I gave it a try,” Pagenaud said. “We still won the Indianapolis 500; the team won the championship. That’s a good year.”
Newgarden went into the race, which was worth double points, trying to hold off Rossi, Pagenaud and Dixon for the title. He controlled his own destiny, though, and Newgarden knew it would take him having an awful race and, most likely, one of his challengers winning to prevent him from wrapping up the title.
Now that’s he’s got a second championship, Newgarden said he will go to work on the most important goal for all Penske drivers. Pagenaud and Power are both Indy 500 winners; Newgarden is not.
Nobody had anything Sunday for Herta, who led 83 of 90 laps.
The 19-year-old rookie upstaged the championship race the entire weekend by leading the speed charts. Then he qualified for the pole position on Saturday, an hour after Andretti Autosport said it was pulling Herta inside its organization next season in a fifth full-time car.
Herta said he will be chasing the season championship next year, when his move takes tiny single-car Harding Steinbrenner Racing into the Andretti camp.
Herta joins his father, Bryan, as winners at the challenging 2.258-mile course. Bryan was a twotime winner at Laguna Seca, and earlier this season his son became the youngest winner in IndyCar history with a victory at Texas Motor Speedway just days before his 19th birthday.
Young Herta bookended his breakthrough season with the victory but couldn’t wrest the rookie of the year title away from Felix Rosenqvist. The 27-year-old Swede matched Herta in speed all weekend, but a penalty in qualifying forced Rosenqvist to a 14th-place starting position in a race he believed could be his first career IndyCar victory.
Rosenqvist angrily accused IndyCar of penalizing him because it wanted Herta to have top rookie honors, but he had calmed down after a Sunday morning meeting with league officials. Rosenqvist said IndyCar admitted to him the penalty was “harsh” but correct, and he said he was “the right amount of angry” to prove a point Sunday.
He had the drive of the day, finishing fifth— just enough to prevent Herta from collecting all the honors.
Power was second, Dixon third and Rossi sixth.
Vettel’s skid over
SINGAPORE — Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel took advantage of an early pit stop to win the Singapore Grand Prix, ending a 13-month winless streak in Formula One.
Vettel, who started third on the grid, crossed the finish line at the 3.1mile Marina Bay street circuit 2.641 seconds ahead of teammate Charles Leclerc, who started from the pole position.
Leclerc led until he pitted on the 21st lap. When Leclerc returned, he was behind Vettel, who had pitted a lap earlier.
Vettel, a four-time F1 season champion, won a race for the first time since the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was third, and season points leader Lewis Hamilton was fourth. With six races remaining, Hamilton holds a 64-point edge over Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas, who finished fifth in Singapore.
Results revised
RICHMOND, Va. — Martin Truex Jr. felt like winning a second straight race to start the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs and sweep the season’s visits to Richmond Raceway was too good to be true.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s sweep of the top four spots there Saturday night apparently was.
The team initially finished in the top four spots, a first for JGR, with Kyle Busch hanging on for second and followed by Denny Hamlin and Erik Jones. However, Jones was later disqualified when his Toyota failed inspection for rear-wheel alignment, dropping him to 38th place and severely damaging his chances of advancing to the second playoff stage.
Pole-sitter Brad Keselowski moved up to fourth with Jones’ disqualification, making the Team Penske veteran the highest-finishing Ford driver.