ELKHART LAKE, Wis. - With arguably his most complete weekend as a member of Team Penske in the books at Road America, Josef Newgarden looked a likely winner in Sunday’s KOHLER Grand Prix.
Alas, an ill-timed caution and being on the wrong compound of Firestone tires at the wrong time cost the Hendersonville, Tenn. native now living in Charlotte likely his second win of the season.
Scott Dixon moved around him on the outside of Turn 1 following a restart on Lap 31, and wasn’t headed the rest of the way.
The win lost though, Newgarden was able to at least match his car number - 2 - with a runner-up finish in his now No. 2 DeVilbiss Team Penske Chevrolet, and his fourth podium finish of the season. He won at Barber, came third at Long Beach and came second in race two at Detroit. This finish today comes after starting third, and after leading 13 laps.
“It stings a little bit coming home second when you feel like you have a winning car. Scott was great today. So was Ganassi Racing. Those guys did a great job. Certainly very deserving of the win.
“But that’s tough coming up a little bit short. I felt like when the caution came out and we were on the primary tires, Helio and Scott had the alternates, I thought this is probably not going to be very good on the restart. It was hard to get temperature in them to get up to speed for the restart.
“I don’t know if it sealed our fate, but once the race was over, I was like, That’s what sealed our fate. It was an ill-timed caution. If that didn’t come out, we would have gotten 10 laps or so on the tires, we would have been okay.
“Once we shuffled back to third, it was about trying to get back by those guys. At that point we were on the same strategy pretty much the last stint. So it was hard to do anything with Scott. Felt we were a touch quicker than him, but couldn’t do anything on that final stint.
“Tough coming up short, but a great weekend for us at Team Penske. We were strong all weekend. Just didn’t get it done when it counted in the race, so that’s going to sting.”
Incidentally, Newgarden’s Barber win was probably at a race he didn’t figure to win - but he’d usurped Dixon for what became the lead there - while here this looked a race he planned to win but didn’t, and lost out to Dixon in the process. He reflected on the humor of this in the post-race press conference.
“I mean, Scott’s one of the hardest to pass. It was funny, because it was kind of a reverse Barber situation,” he laughed. “At Barber this year, you had Scott behind me at the end with a little more overtake, then it was me behind Scott this time with a little more overtake. You kind of had a similar result almost.
“I think it doesn’t necessarily matter who it is. For sure, you know, you give Scott a lot of credit, he’s going to be tough. He’s not going to make a lot of mistakes. You really got to push the issue with him.
“But I think I was concerned about getting by him, just his race pace. We were quicker than him, but we weren’t quick enough to overtake him. We were probably only 2, 3/10ths quicker than him outright speed, which wasn’t enough to do much with him.
“Once we were up to temperature, we were all running full, we both had red tires on, they were new tires for both of us, it was kind of hard to do anything once we got up to speed. I couldn’t make anything happen. As soon as I did something with overtake, he would do it. We were just kind of tit for tat till the end. He’s obviously one of the toughest to race against.
“I think if the situation were reversed, we would have been okay, as well, to win the race. So it’s just tough strategy today.”
Newgarden at least had a simpler weekend at Road America this year. He took in the ambience of the weekend without many of the distractions of a year ago, recovering from a collarbone injury and having launched a children’s book.
“I mean, certainly no distractions. Last year there was probably a little more distraction from trying to deal with comfort inside the cockpit. But from a performance standpoint, I don’t think it was much different.
“I wouldn’t blame the injuries last year for any performance deficit. I thought we were actually very good in the race last year. We had a top 10. I made a mistake in qualifying, which I think if we didn’t do that, we probably could have had a top five last year. If anything, it was nice not having any distractions personally.”
It was a solid weekend altogether though. Newgarden sits fifth in points with 318, 61 behind Dixon at the top.
He heads next to Iowa, where in his most authoritative of his four career victories, he led 282 of 300 laps last year. That race comes up Sunday, July 9, at 5 p.m. ET on NBCSN.