IndyCar: Alarming stat shows the uphill battle Josef Newgarden faces

By Asher Fair | Oct 1, 2020

Scott Dixon, Chip Ganassi Racing, and Josef Newgarden, Team Penske, IndyCar (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images) /

One alarming stat shows just how huge of a challenge it will be for Josef Newgarden to overcome Scott Dixon to win the 2020 IndyCar championship.

Just like that, following a nearly three-month delay to the start of the season, four doubleheader weekends, the first ever August Indy 500 and two other standalone races, there are just three races remaining on the 14-race 2020 IndyCar schedule, including two of yet another doubleheader and one standalone race.

Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon is closing in on his sixth career championship, but two-time and reigning champion Josef Newgarden of Team Penske is still mathematically alive in second place in the championship standings.

Newgarden trails Dixon by a sizable gap of 72 points in the standings with three races to go after Dixon’s disappointing weekend at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, where he is a six-time winner. Dixon entered the weekend with a 96-point lead and recorded two 10th place finishes while Newgarden finished in second and eighth to close the gap by 24 points.

There are other drivers who are still mathematically alive as well, but none of them are even within 45 points of Newgarden and might as well forget about it.

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It’s bad enough for Newgarden that Dixon’s “bad” weekend still featured two top 10 finishes; the five-time champion had finished outside of the top five just once in the season’s first nine races and still has just one finish outside of the top 10.

But here’s the thing that truly indicates that Dixon’s sixth title is practically wrapped up. Note that we haven’t seen an IndyCar championship wrapped up before the season finale since the late Dan Wheldon did it in 2005, and we haven’t seen a driver lead the standings all season since Sam Hornish Jr. did it in 2001. Hornish actually pulled off both fears that year.

Both things could change this weekend.

To beat Dixon, Newgarden needs to make up an average of at least 24 points per race (24 or 24.33 depending on the wins tiebreaker, which Dixon currently leads four to two).

He needs to do this over the course of three races.

Here’s the alarming thing: not once through 11 races this season has Newgarden, who has surprisingly led more laps than Dixon this year (400 to 340), outscored him by more than 24 points in a single race, much less outscored him by a 24-point average over the span of multiple races.

Does that mean it can’t happen?

Of course not; a Newgarden win (51+ points) and a Dixon DNF (likely less than 10 points) suddenly throw this out the window and create a much more manageable gap.

But do we really expect the two-time champion to do it with two of the three remaining races being at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, where Dixon won in July and has recorded four straight top two finishes and where Newgarden has just one top 10 finish and has yet to finish in the top six in seven career starts?

So as much as fans want to believe that what has been a dominant season for Dixon will result in an epic Newgarden rally and come down to the wire between the only two active multi-time champions, the odds of that happening are far less likely than they are of Dixon doing what nobody has done in nearly two decades in terms of his dominance.

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This weekend’s races of the IndyCar Harvest Grand Prix doubleheader are scheduled to take place on Friday, October 2 and Saturday, October 3. They are set to be broadcast live on USA Network beginning at 3:30 p.m. ET and NBC beginning at 2:30 p.m. ET, respectively.