Newgarden Spins and Wins at Bommarito Automotive Group 500

By Jeff Thornton

My first ever Indianapolis 500 was in 1985. This is the race Danny Sullivan spun between turns one and two did not hit any cars are walls and then went on to win the race. This past weekend at the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 the same thing happened.

Newgarden came into the weekend with four wins at World Wide Technology Raceway and two poles. He races for Team Penske and all of their cars are the best in the league. His teammate, Scott McLaughlin won the pole position, Newgarden started the race in the third position and his other teammate, Will Power started in the fourth position. All of the racers coming into the weekend did not know what to expect. Could they race high on the track or would the race be a follow the leader type of event. We would soon find out.

The first caution came early on the lap 7 when the only female driver, Katherine Legge got into Ed Carpenter bringing out the caution. Legge’s day was over but Carpenter would finish the race but was 8 laps down at the end. Conor Daley and Romain Grosjean brought out the second caution when they got close to one another. Both were able to make repairs and finish the race. Rookie Kyffin Simpson spun to bring out the third caution stopping the race on lap 87. After this caution it was green flag racing until lap197 when Josef Newgarden would spin and not hit a wall or any cars. Newgarden lost only one spot and was able to change his tires and pit. “We were really lucky when we did not have any contact with a car or the wall. I was aggressive on using the higher part of race track and it happened,” said Newgarden. The fifth caution came out when David Malukas had an accident on lap 240. Malukas was in the top 10 all day so it was unfortunate he had misfortune. During this caution, Newgarden’s pit crew made a 5 second pit stop change four tires and were able to beat teammate Scott Mclaughlin back on the track to take over the lead. “This was a big reason we won was this pit stop if we do not get in front of McLaughlin I think our chance of winning decreases significantly,” said Newgarden.

Newgarden’s restart on lap 250 was by the book but Alexander Rossi jumped the gun and hit Will Power in the rear causing Power’s car to rise up and put him into the wall. Power was not happy about the outcome. The race was red flagged to clean up the debris. Once the race resumed, Newgarden restarted the race from the pole position and held off his teammate, Scott Mclaughlin and won the race. Linus Lundqvist made two big passes in the final laps to finish third. Alex Palou was awarded fourth when a penalty to Colton Herta was assessed. Herta finished fifth and was the last car on the lead lap.

The race had a total of 676 passes. 254 passes were for track positions, 115 were made by drivers in the top 10 and 44 passes were made from drivers in the top five. These were all track records. It was the fifth race win at World Wide Technology Raceway for Newgarden. It was a spin and win for Newgarden only the second time for me to witness!

In the Indy NXT race, Louis Foster started on the pole and led all 75 laps to win the race. Foster who is the series leaders in points increased his lead over Jacob Abel. Abel finished second and Yuven Sundaramoorthy was third.