Josef Newgarden is the only active driver with a victory at Gateway Motorsports Park. Will he make it two for two by winning the race at the track this Saturday?
Before last season, only two active full-time IndyCar drivers had driven in an IndyCar race at Gateway Motorsports Park. Those two drivers were Helio Castroneves and Tony Kanaan, who drove in five and four races, respectively, at the track between 1998 and 2003.
In fact, Castroneves won the race at the track in 2003, which was the most recent year that the track hosted an IndyCar race since the series returned to it last season.
Castroneves is no longer a full-time IndyCar driver, so Kanaan, who drives full-time for A.J. Foyt Enterprises, is the only active full-time driver who has driven in more than one race at the four-turn, 1.25-mile (2.012-kilometer) Gateway Motorsports Park in Madison, Illinois.
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Because Kanaan has not won any of his five races of his track and the fact that IndyCar only returned to the track last season for the first time since 2003, the only active full-time driver who has won a race at the track is last year’s winner, Josef Newgarden.
Will Newgarden, who drives the #1 Team Penske Chevrolet and drove the #2 Team Penske Chevrolet last season, make it two for two at Gateway Motorsports Park by winning this Saturday’s Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at the track to maintain his status as the only active full-time IndyCar driver who has won a race there?
Newgarden won last season’s race at Gateway Motorsports Park by 0.685 seconds over second place finisher Scott Dixon. Newgarden started the race in second and led 170 of its 248 laps en route to victory, but his victory did not come in as dominant of a fashion as his laps led total might suggest.
It was this bold pass to take the lead from his teammate Simon Pagenaud with 31 laps to go in the race that ultimately sealed him the victory — and ended up sealing him the 2017 IndyCar championship.
As stated above, because of the points implications of this bold pass by Newgarden, he ended up winning the 2017 IndyCar championship by 13 points over Pagenaud. Had he not made this pass for the win, he would have finished with 10 fewer points in the race than he did, and Pagenaud would have finished with 15 more points than he did since he fell back to third place.
This pass effectively created a 25-point swing in the championship in Newgarden’s favor, which ended up being the difference in him winning the title over Pagenaud.
Will Josef Newgarden go two for two at Gateway Motorsports Park by winning his second consecutive and second career IndyCar race at the track in just his second career race at the track this weekend? Tune in to NBC Sports Network at 8:00 p.m. ET on Saturday, August 25 to watch the live broadcast of the 2018 Bommarito Automotive Group 500 to find out.