Best way for Newgarden to forget Iowa: Earn third win in four years at Toronto

By Jul 11, 2018, 1:28 PM EDT
IndyCar
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Josef Newgarden loves everything about Toronto: the people, the food and the cosmopolitan feel.

Oh yeah, one other thing: he loves to win INDYCAR races there.

The defending Verizon IndyCar Series champion has won two of the last three Honda Indy Toronto races on the temporary street course around Exhibition Place just west of downtown T-town.

This Sunday, Newgarden goes for 3 wins in the last 4 starts at Toronto – not to mention what he hopes will be his fourth win of 2018, adding to wins already at Phoenix, Birmingham and nearly three weeks ago at Road America.

“Toronto has been kind to us, for sure,” Newgarden told MotorSportsTalk. “I think with both of our victories there, we had a little bit of luck thrown in, no doubt.

“We had a fast car there last year and capitalized on it when we got the lead. I thought we were a podium threat before that, but the yellows are really the story of Toronto because they can happen at the wrong moments or the right moments.

“And for us, they generally happen in the right moments. You just don’t want to get caught out there. I think if you start from pole around Toronto and have a fast car, you want to make sure you don’t get caught out by something like that. It’s capitalizing if you’re not in the right position or protecting if you are in the right position around that place.”

Needless to say, racing at Toronto is something Newgarden looks forward to each season.

“It’s certainly one of my favorite events,” he said. “The track itself is very fun to drive.

“It’s very unique. I mean, all the IndyCar circuits are, but Toronto is kind of its own thing. It’s probably most closely related to Detroit, but even Detroit is different because of the changes from asphalt to concrete to asphalt in the corners, so that’s a really big challenge on the setup.

“But the event is so well supported and we have such great Canadian fans, I love going there. It’s a fun city, kind of like New York, great fan support, awesome atmosphere and yes, it’s a fun, challenging track to drive.”

Newgarden will be going to Toronto this weekend still feeling the impact of losing this past Sunday at Iowa. He dominated more than the first three-quarters of the race before being passed by James Hinchcliffe with 42 laps to go.

The Canadian native would hold on to claim his first win in over a year (last win came in 2017 at Long Beach).

Now that he’s going to race on Hinchcliffe’s home turf, Newgarden isn’t necessarily seeking revenge for falling short of Iowa. Rather, he is determined to finish what he didn’t at Iowa and once again leave Toronto exclaiming to himself in celebration, “Oh, Canada!”

“I feel motivated and I know the team is motivated to do our job and just go do it again,” Newgarden said. “That’s really all you can do.

“It’s always tough to lose a race at the end of the day. We had a car that was capable of winning, but the thing is we just got beat at Iowa. For three-quarters of the race, we had a car to beat, and the last quarter, we didn’t.

“We just have to learn from that and try to make it better next time, try to go to Toronto and work harder and try to win again. No doubt, we feel motivated that we have speed and can find it if we don’t have it, and we can execute as a race team, so that gives a lot of confidence to just go do a great job at Toronto and try to win.”

There are six races remaining on the schedule and Newgarden finds himself second in the standings, trailing series leader Scott Dixon by 33 points. There’s still plenty of time for Newgarden to overtake Dixon and earn a second consecutive IndyCar crown.

But at the same time, Newgarden is not obsessing about it. His philosophy is fairly straight-forward: he’ll do the best he can in the remaining races and if the championship happens, it happens.

“It’s simple in my mind,” he said. “I’ve always said that a championship takes care of itself.

“You focus on each individual weekend in its own section. Each weekend is its own individual thing and you just try to maximize your performance for each weekend you go to and each track you’re at.

“If you can do that, you maximize your potential for each individual weekend and, to me, the championship kind of sorts itself out. I just kind of focus on that from my standpoint, but the team, mainly Tim (strategist and Team Penske president Tim Cindric) and the engineers, they really try to see the whole picture and if we need to protect for something in the championship in a certain race, then I think they look at that and try to make that decision.

“But me as a driver, I’m more so just trying to maximize our potential and our result every weekend. That simplistic way of looking at, to me, has always worked out well.”

While Dixon is the main guy right now in Newgarden’s sites, he’s not the only one.

“There’s a lot for sure,” Newgarden said. “Dixon, without a doubt, is in the mix and he’s always going to be tough to beat.

“And (Alexander) Rossi and (Ryan) Hunter-Reay from Andretti (Autosport), and for sure Will Power is always going to be in the mix and he needs to be. We’re representing Team Penske both, so I think both of us want to be as high as possible.

“I think those five (including himself) are the real strong championship contenders. There’s always the potential for someone else to creep up in there like Robert Wickens, who has had a great season, or maybe you see more of an emergence from Graham Rahal.

“I think this top five is really, to me, the guys you have to compete against. You never say never because it can flip so quickly in IndyCar, so you have to be careful not to get too confident. But to me, looking at the landscape, I think that’s probably the best bet, to look at those five the most clearly.”

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‘It’s gnarly, bro’: IndyCar drivers face new challenge on streets of downtown Detroit

By Jun 2, 2023, 7:32 PM EDT
IndyCar Detroit downtown
James Black/Penske Entertainment
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DETROIT – It was the 1968 motion picture, “Winning” when actress Joanne Woodward asked Paul Newman if he were going to Milwaukee in the days after he won the Indianapolis 500 as driver Frank Capua.

“Everybody goes to Milwaukee after Indianapolis,” Newman responded near the end of the film.

Milwaukee was a mainstay as the race on the weekend after the Indianapolis 500 for decades, but since 2012, the first race after the Indy 500 has been Detroit at Belle Isle Park.

This year, there is a twist.

Instead of IndyCar racing at the Belle Isle State Park, it’s the streets of downtown Detroit on a race course that is quite reminiscent of the old Formula One and CART race course that was used from 1982 to 1991.

Formula One competed in the United States Grand Prix from 1982 to 1988. Beginning in 1989, CART took over the famed street race through 1991. In 1992, the race was moved to Belle Isle, where it was held through last year (with a 2009-2011 hiatus after the Great Recession).

The Penske Corp. is the promoter of this race, and they did a lot of good at Belle Isle, including saving the Scott Fountain, modernizing the Belle Isle Casino, and basically cleaning up the park for Detroit citizens to enjoy.

The race, however, had outgrown the venue. Roger Penske had big ideas to create an even bigger event and moving it back to downtown Detroit benefitted race sponsor Chevrolet. The footprint of the race course goes around General Motors world headquarters in the GM Renaissance Center – the centerpiece building of Detroit’s modernized skyline.

INDYCAR IN DETROIT: Entry list, schedule, TV info for this weekend

JOSEF’S FAMILY TIES: Newgarden wins Indy 500 with wisdom of father, wife

Motor City is about to roar with the sound of Chevrolet and Honda engines this weekend as the NTT IndyCar Series is the featured race on the nine-turn, 1.7-mile temporary street course.

It’s perhaps the most unique street course on the IndyCar schedule because of the bumps on the streets and the only split pit lane in the series.

The pit lanes has stalls on opposing sides and four lanes across an unusual rectangular pit area (but still only one entry and exit).

Combine that, with the bumps and the NTT IndyCar Series drivers look forward to a wild ride in Motor City.

“It’s gnarly, bro,” Arrow McLaren driver Pato O’Ward said before posting the fastest time in Friday’s first practice. “It will be very interesting because the closest thing that I can see it being like is Toronto-like surfaces with more of a Long Beach-esque layout.

“There’s less room for error than Long Beach. There’s no curbs. You’ve got walls. I think very unique to this place.

PRACTICE RESULTS: Speeds from the first session

“Then it’s a bit of Nashville built into it. The braking zones look really very bumpy. Certain pavements don’t look bumpy but with how the asphalt and concrete is laid out, there’s undulation with it. So, you can imagine the cars are going to be smashing on every single undulation because we’re going to go through those sections fairly fast, and obviously the cars are pretty low. I don’t know.

“It looks fun, man. It’s definitely going to be a challenge. It’s going to be learning through every single session, not just for drivers and teams but for race control. For everyone.

“Everybody has to go into it knowing not every call is going to be smooth. It’s a tall task to ask from such a demanding racetrack. I think it’ll ask a lot from the race cars as well.”

The track is bumpy, but O’Ward indicated he would be surprised if it is bumper than Nashville. By comparison to Toronto, driving at slow speed is quite smooth, but fast speed is very bumpy.

“This is a mix of Nashville high-speed characteristics and Toronto slow speed in significant areas,” O’Ward said. “I think it’ll be a mix of a lot of street courses we go to, and the layout looks like more space than Nashville, which is really tight from Turn 4 to 8. It looks to be a bit more spacious as a whole track, but it’ll get tight in multiple areas.”

The concept of having four-wide pit stops is something that excites the 24-year-old driver from Monterey, Mexico.

“I think it’s innovation, bro,” O’Ward said. “If it works out, we’ll look like heroes.

“If it doesn’t, we tried.”

Because of the four lanes on pit road, there is a blend line the drivers will have to adhere to. Otherwise, it would be chaos leaving the pits compared to a normal two-lane pit road.

“If it wasn’t there, there’d be guys fighting for real estate where there’s one car that fits, and there’d be cars crashing in pit lane,” O’Ward said. “I get why they did that. It’s the same for everybody. I don’t think there’s a lot of room to play with. That’s the problem.

“But it looks freaking gnarly for sure. Oh my God, that’s going to be crazy.”

Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing believes the best passing areas will be on the long straights because of the bumps in the turns. That is where much of the action will be in terms of gaining or losing a position in the race.

“It will also be really easy to defend in my opinion,” Palou said. “Being a 180-degree corner, you just have to go on the inside and that’s it. There’s going to be passes for sure but its’ going to be risky.

“Turn 1, if someone dives in, you end up in the wall. They’re not going to be able to pass you on the exit, so maybe with the straight being so long you can actually pass before you end up on the braking zone.”

Palou’s teammate, Marcus Ericsson, was at the Honda simulator in Brownsburg, Indiana, before coming to Detroit and said he was shocked by the amount of bumps on the simulator.

Race promoter Bud Denker, the President of Penske Corporation, and Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix President Michael Montri, sent the track crews onto the streets with grinders to smooth out the bumps on the race course several weeks ago.

“They’ve done a decent amount of work, and even doing the track walk, it looked a lot better than what we expected,” Ericsson said. “I don’t think it’ll be too bad. I hope not. That’ll be something to take into account.

“I think the track layout doesn’t look like the most fun. Maybe not the most challenging. But I love these types of tracks with rules everywhere. It’s a big challenge, and you have to build up to it. That’s the types of tracks that I love to drive. It’s a very much Marcus Ericsson type of track. I like it.”

Scott Dixon, who was second fastest in the opening session, has competed on many new street circuits throughout his legendary racing career. The six-time NTT IndyCar Series champion for Chip Ganassi Racing likes the track layout, even with the unusual pit lane.

“I don’t think that’s going to be something that catches on where every track becomes a double barrel,” Dixon said. “It’s new and interesting.

“As far as pit exit, I think Toronto exit is worse with how the wall sticks out. I think in both lanes, you’ve got enough lead time to make it and most guys will make a good decision.”

It wasn’t until shortly after 3 p.m. ET on Friday that the IndyCar drivers began the extended 90-minute practice session to try out the race course for the first time in real life.

As expected, there were several sketchy moments, but no major crashes during the first session despite 19 local yellow flags for incidents and two red flags.

Rookie Agustin Canapino had to cut his practice short after some damage to his No. 78 Dallara-Chevrolet, but he was among many who emerged mostly unscathed from scrapes with the wall.

“It was honestly less carnage than I expected,” said Andretti Autosport’s Kyle Kirkwood, who was third fastest in the practice after coming off his first career IndyCar victory in the most recent street race at Long Beach in April. “I think a lot of people went off in the runoffs, but no one actually hit the wall (too hard), which actually surprised me. Hats off to them for keeping it clean, including myself.

“It was quite a bit less grip than I think everyone expected. Maybe a little bit more bumpy down into Turn 3 than everyone expected. But overall they did a good job between the two manufacturers. I’m sure everyone had pretty much the same we were able to base everything off of. We felt pretty close to maximum right away.”

Most of the preparation for this event was done either on the General Motors Simulator in Huntersville, North Carolina, or the Honda Performance Development simulator in Brownsburg, Indiana.

“Now, we have simulators that can scan the track, so we have done plenty of laps already,” Power told NBC Sports. “They have ground and resurfaced a lot of the track, so it should be smoother.

“But nothing beats real-world experience. It’s going to be a learning experience in the first session.”

As a Team Penske driver, Power and his teammates were consulted about the progress and layout of the Detroit street course. They were shown what was possible with the streets that were available.

“We gave some input back after we were on the similar what might be ground and things like that,” Power said.

Racing on the streets of Belle Isle was a fairly pleasant experience for the fans and corporate sponsor that compete in the race.

But the vibe at the new location gives this a “big event” feel.

“The atmosphere is a lot better,” Power said. “The location, the accessibility for the fans, the crowd that will be here, it’s much easier. I think it will be a much better event.

“It feels like a Long Beach, only in a much bigger city. That is what street course racing is all about.”

Because the track promoter is also the team owner, Power and teammates Scott McLaughlin and Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden will have a very busy weekend on the track, and with sponsor and personal appearances.

“That’s what pays the bills and allows us to do this,” Power said.

Follow Bruce Martin on Twitter at @BruceMartin_500