Josef Newgarden owns 'miscalculation' that eroded his IndyCar title lead
Newgarden leads Scott Dixon by three points entering the double points finale at Sonoma
By Bruce Martin
After seeing his lead in the Verizon IndyCar Series championship shrink from 31 points to just three over Scott Dixon, Josef Newgarden could have been excused if he wanted to hang his head following an 18th-place finish in Sunday's IndyCar Grand Prix at The Glen.
Newgarden was the leader when he made his final pit stop on lap 45.
But as he left the pits, he lost control of his Chevrolet and crashed into the pit retaining wall. Then, Sébastien Bourdais ran into the back of Newgarden's Chevy, damaging the rear suspension and rear wing assembly.
Newgarden's Team Penske crew repaired the damage and return him to the track just one lap down, but the damage to his championship was already done.
It all comes down to a virtual winner-take-all scenario at the Sept. 17 Go Pro Grand Prix of Sonoma.
Instead of hanging his head, Newgarden parked his No. 2 Chevrolet in the pit area after the race, climbed out and congratulated his crew for the effort they made just to get him back into the contest. Newgarden took full responsibility for the mistake that could cost him a championship.
"I messed it up there in the beginning of the stop, sliding too far in the box for my guys, and we didn't have a good pit stop on top of it, so obviously, that was a mistake by me," Newgarden said. "Exiting the pits, we thought we got by Will Power. He clicked the button earlier, I locked up and touched the guardrail and then got slammed into by Bourdais.
"A couple of mistakes back to back put us where we didn't want to be. It's a tough day and hard to make mistakes like that. This team is resilient and gave me what I needed today. We have to go to Sonoma now and see what we can do."
Newgarden believes the day could have gone many ways with the weather and chose a direction with the setup that didn't work.
"Today, it just didn't work out for us," Newgarden said. "Now, we can make our own destiny out of a three-point lead and that's all you really want -- to be able to control your own destiny. Going to Sonoma we can do that. We wish we had a bigger cushion but it was always going to come down to this final race and that is how it's going to be."
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Newgarden believed it was a long race for him, but part of that had to do with the incident at the end.
Now, he has to race to win at Sonoma.
"It was always going to come down to Sonoma," Newgarden said. "That's what it's going to come down to in the final race.
"It looks like a stupid error but it's easy to do. I made a miscalculation. I went too heavy on the brake pedal and pushed out wide. It was a mistake. Not fun to make but it happened.
"We have to be perfect at Sonoma. It was always going to be a dogfight, whether we had a 60-point lead or not. With double points, you'd have to have a 90-point lead or something crazy to get down to Sonoma. It's going to be quite a race. It's going to be a five-horse race and the team that is most perfect is going to get it done. I think you have to win the race regardless now. I don't think three points makes much of a difference but hey, at least we have that."
Newgarden admits, though, he is not a fan of double points at Sonoma and would like to see that eliminated.
"I don't think it really rewards the champion," Newgarden said. "Juan Montoya got dinged at it in the past. It puts people in a bad spot where if they have a great body of work throughout the year and then they have a mechanical failure and somebody 90 points back wins the race, they win the championship.
"I'm not so sure if I was on the other end and I won the championship on somebody else's misfortune that I'd be happy about it. I'm not a huge fan of it but this is the system we have and we have to make the most of it.
"I'm not a fan of double points anywhere."
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