IndyCar notebook: Texas renewal close, McLaren/Alonso update, Dixon, Roval and more

By Aug 10, 2018, 5:00 PM EDT
Photo: IndyCar
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Catching up on some of the most recent IndyCar news after a couple of vacation days off:

Texas Motor Speedway, IndyCar “getting closer” on new agreement

Adios, Circuit of the Americas (COTA), we hardly knew ‘ya.

Rumors of the Verizon IndyCar Series adding a race at COTA in Austin, Texas for the 2019 season appear to have hit a wall.

Texas Motor Speedway and the sanctioning body are reportedly closing in on a new agreement to keep IndyCar at the Fort Worth track for what is believed to be the next three years.

“We’re getting closer,” TMS president Eddie Gossage told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “We should be finished soon (on a new contract). All is good.”

However, according to the S-T, Gossage’s hope of returning TMS’s annual IndyCar race date to the weekend after the Indianapolis 500 will not happen.

Rather, IndyCar will continue to race at Detroit’s Belle Isle Park on the weekend after the Indy 500. Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources made that announcement earlier Friday.

It would appear that short of any last-minute obstacles that pop up, that TMS will continue to host the only IndyCar race in the state of Texas for the foreseeable future.

COTA has long been talked about as a possible venue to host the Verizon IndyCar Series, but TMS has held exclusive rights to IndyCar racing in Texas and will likely continue to do so.

Also, according to the S-T, TMS hopes to put tickets to its 2019 IndyCar race on sale by later this month (although no date has been announced yet).

With COTA now likely out of the picture, rumors persist that IndyCar will still add a short-track oval race at Richmond Raceway in 2019, essentially replacing another short track from 2018 that will not be on next season’s schedule, namely, Phoenix.

Rumors about IndyCar returning to Homestead-Miami Speedway appear to have faded.

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McLaren will likely be a later rather than sooner situation in IndyCar

While McLaren will likely still come to IndyCar at some point, with each passing day it appears it won’t happen in 2019.

McLaren boss Zak Brown continues to reiterate that his company will go IndyCar racing, but given that we’re nearly in the middle of August, not to mention McLaren’s floundering efforts in Formula One this season, it’s likely that expansion to IndyCar will have to be put on hold for at least one more year.

Just the due-diligence, not to mention hiring drivers and crew personnel, buying equipment, testing, etc., it appears McLaren will hold off until 2020 so that it can get its F1 house in better shape, which Brown has insisted is its No. 1 priority.

So where does that leave Fernando Alonso, whose contract with McLaren expires at the end of the current F1 season?

Initially, Alonso was expected to be the figurehead driver in the McLaren IndyCar program. But now it’s 50-50 he stays with McLaren going forward, even if it means one more year in F1 before a potential move to IndyCar.

But Alonso has other options, too.

Brown admits Alonso is frustrated at the lack of performance he and McLaren have had this season. Alonso is currently ninth in the F1 standings.

And that frustration could ultimately lead to a parting of the ways between Alonso and McLaren, something that Brown appeared to hint at in a recent interview with the Indianapolis Star.

“I think if we were more competitive, he’d definitely want to stay in Formula One,” Brown told The Star. “He’s talked about his frustrations about being in a Manufacturers’ Championship as opposed to a Drivers’ Championship.

“If you look at the race results, it’s probably a fairly fair statement (that Alonso could leave at season’s end).”

Some reports indicate that if Alonso does leave McLaren but elects to stay in F1, he may follow teammate Daniel Ricciardo to Red Bull for at least the 2019 season. However, if Red Bull is going to commit a big financial package to attract Alonso, the company would likely demand at least a two- or three-year commitment from Alonso to stay in F1.

There is another wild card that Alonso may have up his sleeve. He reportedly is so bound and determined to come to IndyCar, that he may do so with another team.

While McLaren has been linked as a potential partner with Andretti Autosport when it does come to IndyCar, that doesn’t necessarily mean Alonso couldn’t try to write his own deal sans McLaren.

If McLaren holds off until 2020 to come to the U.S., Alonso could still join Andretti Autosport as a driver for hire in 2019, much like he did when he raced for the Andretti camp in the 2017 Indy 500.

But with the Andretti camp already having Marco Andretti, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Zach Veach and Alexander Rossi, adding yet another team – without McLaren backing – could be difficult unless a major sponsor could be attracted to foot the bill for Alonso.

The Indy Star also hinted that Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing may have an interest in the Spanish two-time F1 champ potentially joining the current driver lineup of Graham Rahal and Takuma Sato.

Chip Ganassi Racing, which cut its IndyCar program from four to just two drivers in 2018, may be another potential landing spot for Alonso if he cuts ties with McLaren.

Frankly, CGR could be the biggest dark horse of all in a potential bid to get Alonso.

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No news may be good news when it comes to Scott Dixon

Speaking of CGR, there has been no news on the Scott Dixon front.

But that actually may be a very good thing.

Throughout Ganassi’s three-plus decade IndyCar ownership tenure, he’s made it a policy to not negotiate in the media with drivers.

Ganassi believes in keeping things behind closed doors when it comes to new contracts, and rightly so. The last thing a potential championship team or driver needs is to have a “he said/he said” back and forth about contracts when the more important business of winning the IndyCar title is at hand.

That being said, some might say this is the perfect time for Ganassi to re-sign Dixon, given the latter is leading the IndyCar Series championship and would have one less thing to worry about heading into the season finale at Sonoma next month.

Reports and/or rumors about Dixon going to F1, or Team Penske or even sports car racing in 2019 have slowly begun to fade, leaving pretty much just one remaining possibility: re-signing with CGR.

If true, look for an announcement to come before Sonoma.

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Oh, say, can you see a Roval in IndyCar’s future?

Will Power checked out Charlotte Motor Speedway’s “Roval” this week.

While Power liked what he saw, it’s unlikely IndyCar will take to the Roval any time soon.

Designed somewhat like the part-oval, part-road course layout at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Grand Prix of Indianapolis, the Roval will be part of a major racing series later this season for the annual fall NASCAR Cup race at CMS.

IndyCar has not raced at CMS since 1999. But Power would be interested to see the Roval on the IndyCar circuit at some point.

“That would be a total home race for me,” said Power, who lives about 15 miles away from CMS in suburban Charlotte. “I’d love to see that, that would be awesome. But, I have no clue if that would ever happen.”

A potential rule of thumb is this: let NASCAR run at least 2-3 races on the Roval and see what happens. If the attendance numbers are promising and TV ratings are strong, don’t be surprised if IndyCar may consider racing upon the Roval in maybe 2022 or so.

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IndyCar once again will not hold season-ending awards banquet

NASCAR does it, and so does the NHRA – holding end-of-season awards banquets, that is.

NASCAR hosts its banquet in Las Vegas two weeks after the season ends, while NHRA will once again host its annual pro classes driver awards banquet in Hollywood one day after the current season concludes in mid-November.

But not so for IndyCar.

MotorSportsTalk has learned from two high-ranking IndyCar series officials this week that once again, a post-season awards banquet will not take place this year.

The last formal IndyCar post-season banquet was held in San Francisco following the 2015 season.

2016 series champion Simon Pagenaud was feted at a dinner in Indianapolis after his title-winning season, but 2017 series champion Josef Newgarden was not honored until prior to this year’s season-opening race in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Reports that a banquet would be held this year following the final race of the season were strong – until about three weeks ago, when it was announced that Laguna Seca would replace Sonoma Raceway on the IndyCar circuit in 2019.

Essentially, there went Sonoma from the future schedule, and there went the likelihood of the awards banquet, as well.

Somehow, it just doesn’t seem right that at the height of a season’s conclusion, those who worked the hardest and were the most successful, aren’t recognized for their efforts until nearly six months – and nearly 4,000 miles away — later.

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Through belief and grief, Josef Newgarden won Indy 500 with life lessons from his family

By May 30, 2023, 11:00 AM EDT
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INDIANAPOLIS – Josef Newgarden was taught by his father that he could win the Indy 500, and he learned through his wife that it would be OK to always lose it.

After finally winning the 107th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, the typically unflappable two-time NTT IndyCar Series champion got choked up when discussing the importance of Joey Newgarden, who instilled “internal belief,” and Ashley Newgarden, who “helps make my world go round and sees the heartbreak more than anyone else.”

Monday morning, while Josef Newgarden made the rounds of photo shoots and media obligations at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, beaming family members lingered among incessant laughter on the Yard of Bricks – savoring the moment and recounting their supportive roles through a journey that took 12 tries (Newgarden tied the record for most Indianapolis 500 starts before his first victory).

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For Joey Newgarden, it was turning a scrawny kid (“when Josef was 11, he was 4 foot 11, 67 pounds”) into the superstar with six-pack abs who proved a worthy main character in the first season of IndyCar’s “100 Days to Indy” docuseries.

For Ashley, there were the anguished and helpless days after many Brickyard disappointments that thrust her into the role of an indefatigable sports psychologist.

“In a lot of ways, it’s terribly difficult for someone like Ashley,” Newgarden told NBC Sports during a reflective interview late Monday morning in an antiseptic glass-paneled office on the fourth floor of the IMS media center. “She carries the burden more than anybody, and people don’t know that and see that. I’m not easy to be around when my heart’s broken.

“And when this place breaks your heart, it’s tough to leave here every year. I’m going to cry thinking about it. It’s really, really hard. And she just … endures it is probably the one way to put it. She has endured the pain. And I think it’s almost a harder pain than the pain I feel because she’s not asking for it, but she’s having to live it.

“And there’s more than just that. You think about the genuinely impossible odds that are so against you to make it to this level, and a lot of it is down to my mom and dad, and the way they literally laid everything on the line to make this happen.

“We don’t come from just some blank check group. I came from a great upbringing. We had great opportunity, but you really have to put everything on the line if you’re going to make this type of career work, and they did that. So to come against all these odds, and for all of us to be there together and win this race.

“It’s full circle.”

Josef Newgarden father wife
Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden poses with parents Joey and Tina and his wife, Ashley, during the Memorial Day photo shoot at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Jeffrey Brown/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images).

Josef Newgarden was ready to quit motorsports after his first full-bodied car race – a Southern Regional Skip Barber event in 2006 at Sebring International Raceway.

After a hugely successful career in go-karting, this was his chance to take a critical next step toward the major leagues, and it was happening on one of the most daunting, physically punishing road courses in the United States.

So on the first lap, Newgarden fully committed to taking the Turn 17 corner, pancaking his car into the wall with embarrassing overexuberance.

“It was basically a typical me move,” he said sheepishly. “I always overcook high-speed stuff. I love it. That’s what my essence is. I love a high-speed track. I will send it bigger than anybody. That was one of the days I oversent it into Turn 17 and overcooked it straight into the wall.”

There was another race the next day, but at dinner that night, Newgarden was having second thoughts.

“I was saying I don’t know if I want to do this,” he said. “I don’t know that I can do this. There definitely was doubt in a lot of ways, and I’m saying this stuff, and my dad made me run the race the next day when I didn’t want to run the race. That’s how much I was taken aback by the whole thing. He made me run the race. And most people would not ever guess that story that my dad is trying to help make me run the race the next day because I don’t want to do it, and because I feel like I can’t do it.”

It’s unfathomable to consider because Newgarden, 32, comes off as one of the most supremely confident drivers in IndyCar through a persona of unflagging optimism. Whether starting 17th (as he did in the 107th Indy 500) or first, he never betrays an iota of doubt that he can win every race.

Which, under the watchful eye of his father, is exactly what he did in the second Skip Barber race at Sebring.

It was “a big turning point” on the championship mettle required for big-time auto racing.

Josef Newgarden celebrates with parents Joey and Tina the morning after winning the 107th Indy 500 (Grace Hollars/IndyStar/USA TODAY Sports Images Network).

“There was a light bulb that switched for me for sure that I was like you have to dig deep,” Newgarden said. “It was one of those moments of do you want to do this or not? And I think you either change in that moment to fully get on board or not. Because you can’t be in the middle. You won’t run for Roger Penske in the biggest race in the world if you are.

“It’s weird to go back and talk about it because I know it’s become second nature to me. There’s so much pressure, there’s so much obligation of be you, be awesome. Talk to our sponsors. Be their representative. Get in the car, do a great job. The amount of commitment that people put on you. You just can’t crack.

“It must have been in there, and Joey just brought it out of me.”

Josef Newgarden describes his dad as “the ultimate believer” who was always there as his son barnstormed around the Midwest on dozens of go-kart trips from their home outside Nashville, Tennessee.

“He’s just a very distinct human being,” Josef said of Joey. “But he has an amazing talent for optimism, and that can’t be understated how he’s given that to me. I can be a very realistic and pragmatic person.

“Those don’t always line up, having extreme optimism and trying to be realistic about something and see all scenarios. I think I’m able to be both now. I try to see things truly for what they are, and I don’t overreach. But I also have ultimate belief that anything can happen and anything is possible. My dad embodied that from the very beginning.”

Though Joey refers to it as “putting in the work,” Josef Newgarden said there were immense sacrifices made by him and his mother, Tina, so their son could pursue the dream of becoming a professional race car driver with a single-minded focus.

Josef Newgarden celebrates with fans in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway grandstands after winning the 107th Indy 500 (Jenna Watson/USA TODAY Sports Images).

“It was, ‘We don’t have enough money? We’ll get the money,’ ” he said. “We will figure it out. And I didn’t have to carry any of that burden when I was young. If we go into debt, who cares? We’ll figure it out. Are we out of opportunities? Doesn’t matter. We’ll figure something out and keep going.”

His father recalls it all as being my design of trying to mold a young teenager “who never had belief in himself” while competing in baseball, basketball and go-karts against bigger competition.

Joey Newgarden, who grew up sweeping floors for 75 cents an hour in Miami while working for his father in the business of photography chemicals, set to establish that the simple principles of hard work and a positive attitude can take someone to whatever station in life they desire.

“Maybe I was just trying to trick him,” Joey Newgarden, wearing an Indy 500 champion’s hat and dark sunglasses, told a few reporters Monday morning at IMS. “I was scrawny like that when I was a kid, too, and I didn’t really have a male role model doing that with me, so I had to try to come up with a plan. We’ve got two daughters and one son, and he was the youngest. And it was, ‘How are we going to do it and convince him that he can be No. 1?’ It’s tough competition out there.”

Though there was a physical aspect (Newgarden became a fitness fanatic in his later teens), much of dad’s grooming was on the attitude of his son, who has retained the competitive fire and grace as a world-class driver but shed being a poor loser.

AUTO: MAY 29 INDYCAR Series The 107th Indianapolis 500
Josef Newgarden with his parents, the winning No. 2 Dallara-Chevrolet and the Borg-Warner Trophy (Jeffrey Brown/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images).

“He was the biggest baby about racing cars,” Joey recalled with a laugh. “He wanted to win every race and lead every lap literally from the very beginning. And when he’d get out of the car, he was Tony Stewart Jr. He wanted to win every single time.

“I always told him you’ve got to learn how to lose before you learn how to win. Because if you don’t know how to lose, you don’t know what winning really means.”

Josef Newgarden said the crash in Sebring went a long way toward establishing his mental toughness.

“You either are hardened by that, and you’re steel,” he said. “Or you’re weak, and you’re not going to make it at this level. It’s just what it takes.

“From that point on, it was never again am I going to lack that type of belief. But Joey is central to the belief system. He should have full credit for that. It sounds simple, but not everybody can truly put their all into something and make it happen at all costs. He gave that to me.”

If his parents provided the immutable faith in pursuing a goal that seemed impossible, his wife of four years (and romantic partner of nearly a decade) gave him the gift of letting go of it.

Ashley Newgarden annually watched her husband agonizingly wrestle with the toll of coming up short in the Indy 500 (which Team Penske now has won a record 19 times).

“Every year, you see someone else get that, and you want it so desperately for yourself and you can picture it for yourself, too,” she said. “So with Josef, the heartbreak just comes from just the thought of, ‘Maybe I’ll never get this opportunity.’ And that’s the worst thing. Because you only get one chance a year, and you only have a certain amount of years you can do this and be competitive at it.

“And he knows that it’s now or never. Every year we left, it was just more hard and more hard and sadder and sadder and sadder.”

There was little she could do to console him, too.

“It’s the toughest part because she wants nothing more than to help, and she can’t help me,” Josef said. “That’s why I say she’s had to endure the pain because in some relationships that person is able to help the individual that needs it. And that doesn’t work for me. So she can’t help.”

Ashley Newgarden watches the 107th Indy 500 (Grace Hollars/IndyStar/USA TODAY Sports Images Network).

Said Ashley: “There’s nothing you can say. Just give him your support. You can say, ‘That one hurt, it’s yours next year.’ But he’s such a realist, and he doesn’t need the coaching like that from me. You just have to be supportive, and my biggest focus was always how do we get him in a mentally stronger place before the next race and not let this bleed over, (and) he goes into the next race angry.

“It was always the focus of how do we somehow let this go and just put it on the back burner and kind of forget about it. This race is done. After the month, just forget about it until next year. Go to Detroit and have a good season.”

Eventually, Ashley helped Josef with landing in a place where he could divorce himself from some of the pain in the Indy misses. After his second IndyCar championship, Josef struck a new tone publicly about refusing to let the Brickyard define him.

“I think you have to get to that point, because if not, this will just eat you alive,” Ashley said. “And you’ll just not feel you’ve accomplished enough, even though it’s harder to win a championship. This is a very hard race to win, of course. But it’s harder to put together seasons and to be an IndyCar Series champion, but yet this race is more elusive, and you want this more almost.

“I think recently over the last couple of years, really the last year, he started to focus on ‘I’ve done my job. I’ve done everything that I can. I’ve given them two championships.’ I think he started to focus more on that, and he was going to do everything that he could, and it’s going to be enough, and if he doesn’t win the 500, that does not take away from his career. Because I think people think it does. And I think he just kind of let go of it.”

Newgarden described the new outlook as conceding he never might win the Brickyard despite the omnipresent belief that he could.

(Joe Skibinski/Penske Entertainment)

“I kind of grieved it in a way,” he said. “It’s a weird way to put it, but I’m going to grieve the Indy 500 and it just doesn’t matter if I don’t ever win it. I truly do not subscribe to this thesis that you have to win this race to have a complete career. Of course, I would love to win the race, and it is a huge achievement. And it is the most difficult race and the most accomplishing race to win.

“But it shouldn’t define your time in the sport if you’re given that time. So I grieved the possibility of it and said if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. I’m not going to linger on it if it doesn’t work out.”

Ashley, who studied psychology in college, provides an emotionally intelligent yin to her husband’s coolly detached yang.

“She’s a very smart woman and more of an empath than I am, which is a little tough because she can be very emotional, and I’m not emotional at all half the time,” Josef said. “But she’s very intuitive with that type of mentality and trying to understand how to survive things and construct things in your brain or how to reason with things. So she’s definitely been most helpful for me to find balance in life.

“Because without her I would probably be a much darker, more miserable person. I would cut everything off and have no balance in my life without her. She’s really the only one that’s figured out how to give that to me.”

Serving as an unofficial nutritionist for her husband’s elite athlete lifestyle, Ashley has tried to find other ways to “make sure everything in his life is easy. Home, food, everything else is taken care of, and I don’t think it comes from a place of him needing that. But that’s how I show him love in those moments and am supportive.”

On the Sunday morning of the Indy 500, Ashley and Josef Newgarden usually awake to a stress level that never subsides.

It wasn’t there this year.

“It was so weird,” she said. “I’ll be honest, starting 17th, I’m like, ‘Oh man, I don’t know if we’re going to get up there’. But yesterday morning, we were so easy. And I don’t know if it was because I just felt so confident within. I think it was just a different change of mind for him and I. It was like if it doesn’t happen today, it’s OK. I think you have to get there mentally because if not, this will emotionally kill you.”

Josef and Ashley Newgarden shared their winning Indy 500 moment with their 13-month-old son, Kota (Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports Images).

Joey Newgarden also has noticed an off-track calmness surrounding his family.

When Ashley gave birth to their first child, a son named Kota, in April 2022, Josef Newgarden joined his siblings in each having children within a 20-month span after the trio had gotten married within three years of each other.

His two sisters (the oldest works in pharmaceutical sales at a California company; the other is a registered nurse at a cancer research facility in Seattle) “are doing really well for themselves” to the delight of their parents.

“It’s storybook, the whole thing,” Joey said. “It almost scares me at this point. When things go this well, you’re always waiting for something to go wrong.

He’s got a wonderful wife that he’s been with for 10 years, married for three or four. He’s got a great relationship. What is that movie with Jimmy Cagney? Top of the world, ma.”

And Josef Newgarden’s family says the 27-time IndyCar winner is not stopping there.

“I’ve never met someone that just wants to break all the records,” Ashley said. “I know everyone says that, but this dude, he knows the stats. He watches them. It’s never enough.”

AUTO: MAY 29 INDYCAR Series The 107th Indianapolis 500
(Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)