Newgarden claims 1st IndyCar victory, fending off Rahal for 1-2 American finish
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — 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 IndyCar 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 polesitter Helio Castroneves.
Newgarden led 46 of the 90 laps. He got his first win at Barber Motorsports Park a few hours from his hometown of Hendersonville, Tenn., with most of the major drama coming behind him.
It was his first chance to celebrate a win since Indy Lights in 2011.
Newgarden had posted second-place 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 win.
“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, last week. He still couldn’t break through in Alabama, saying it was about tire management not fuel.
The clean-cut Newgarden — who Dixon called “a super nice guy” and “a huge talent” — 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.”
“I think he might have spit it out,” Dixon said.
Rahal’s strong finish Sunday, meanwhile, gave Honda a boost after Chevrolet fielded the seven fastest cars in qualifying, with Team Penske sweeping the top three.
Rahal flirted with his first victory since becoming the youngest IndyCar winner in 2008 at 19 years old and picked up considerable ground in the final laps.
He made an outside pass of Ryan Hunter Reay with 10 laps to go, went by Castroneves and then took on Dixon. Rahal finished 2.2 seconds behind Newgarden.
Two-time defending champion Hunter-Reay, the 2014 Indianapolis 500 winner, made a big surge after starting 18th. He finished fifth, while Team Penske’s Power was fourth.
Castroneves fell back to 15th after having to make a late pit stop for fuel, one spot ahead of Penske teammate Juan Pablo Montoya, the series points leader.
NHRA
BAYTOWN, Texas — Ron Capps raced to his second Funny Car victory of the season Sunday, beating teammate Jack Beckman in the O’Reilly Auto Parts NHRA SpringNationals.
Capps powered past Beckman in the final round to earn his 44th Funny Car victory and move into second behind John Force on NHRA’s career wins list in the division.
In a battle between Don Schumacher Racing Dodge Chargers, Capps finished in 4.244 seconds at 258.32 mph, while Beckman trailed with a 4.480 at 205.16.
Doug Kalitta won in Top Fuel, and Erica Enders-Stevens topped the Pro Stock field.
NASCAR Sprint Cup: Though an angry Tony Stewart didn’t stick around to chat about an incident that left him with a 41stplace finish Sunday at Richmond International Raceway, he apparently felt it was Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s fault.
After a crash that left his car unable to continue, Stewart cursed Earnhardt’s name on the team radio, then threw his helmet and HANS device into his No. 14 team transporter like he was trying out to quarterback his hometown Indianapolis Colts.
So what happened in the front-stretch contact between the two drivers with 40 laps to go?
“I don’t know!” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said on pit road after the race. “I never saw him — he ran into the back of our car.”
Earnhardt motioned to a dark rubber mark just behind his left rear tire.
“I mean, he hit me right here,” Earnhardt said. “I ain’t got that good of a peripheral vision. Pretty good, but not that good.”
The Hendrick Motorsports driver said he knew Stewart was mad at him for the incident, but wasn’t quite sure why.
“Well, it’s never his fault,” Earnhardt said. “I was doing everything I needed to do. I didn’t drive under, I didn’t drive into him, I didn’t move my line at all. He’s gotta take a little ownership in what happened there.”
As for Earnhardt’s day overall — he finished 14th — the driver said his tires felt inconsistent and his car wasn’t good on short runs. Adjustments didn’t seem to help much, he said.
“We had good long-run speed, and that’s good if you’re running cars in the ’70s and ’80s,” he said with a chuckle. “These days, with all these damn cautions, you need that short-run speed.”
— Wire services