IndyCar: Josef Newgarden is still missing one thing

Josef Newgarden’s first Long Beach win shot him to the top of the IndyCar standings. Now he is seeking the one thing he is still missing.

Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden was a relative non-factor in the 2022 IndyCar season opener on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, something which was made even more disappointing by the fact that teammate Scott McLaughlin dominated the race from the pole position and picked up his first career win, plus the fact that teammate Will Power also finished on the podium.

But since then, the 31-year-old Hendersonville, Tennessee native hasn’t been beaten.

A last-lap, last-turn pass on McLaughlin at Texas Motor Speedway put the driver of the #2 Chevrolet back in victory lane in 2022, and he backed that up by winning on the streets of Long Beach, California.

As a result, the two-time champion now leads the IndyCar championship standings for the first time since he won the 2019 title.

Newgarden entered the 2022 season as the only driver to win multiple races in both the 2020 and 2021 seasons. Through three races this year, he has already extended his streak, and that streak is now at six seasons, all six seasons since joining Team Penske in 2017. Nobody else’s streak has hit two.

But none of his first 21 wins had ever come in a race as iconic as IndyCar’s most prestigious street race, of which he finally became a winner after 10 attempts.

Newgarden’s first attempt at Long Beach as a rookie in 2012 began on the front row, when he was in a Honda for Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing. It ended seconds later, when he crashed in turn one.

He found himself in contention again in 2014, but he was involved in a late multi-car wreck with Andretti Autosport teammates Ryan Hunter-Reay and James Hinchcliffe. The Honda podium sweep became a Chevrolet 1-2 with Ed Carpenter Racing’s Mike Conway and Power.

It took Newgarden until his first season with Team Penske to finish on the podium in Long Beach, when he finished in third place. He finished in second in 2019, but he had nothing for Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi, who won by over 20 seconds.

In 2020, the race was canceled due to COVID-19-related restrictions, and in 2021, he finished in second place again, this time behind Andretti Autosport’s Colton Herta, who was on rails after carving his way through the field from a season-worst 14th starting position.

In 2022, Newgarden finally pulled off the win in the “Indy 500 of street course racing”, taking advantage of fast pit stops, great defensive moves on Andretti Autosport’s Romain Grosjean and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou, and, of course, Herta’s Nashville-esque mistake that might have cost him the win.

Speaking of the Indy 500, his Long Beach win isn’t the only crown jewel win he hopes to achieve this year.

Following his Long Beach victory, an Indy 500 win is the only piece still truly missing from Newgarden’s IndyCar resume.

With 22 wins and two championships, Newgarden is already among the all-time greats, and his position on the all-time list should only continue to climb considering the fact that he is still only 31. But the Indy 500 continues to elude him.

Believe it or not, Newgarden’s best Indy 500 run actually did not come at Team Penske. He finished in a career-high third place after starting in a career-high second in the middle of the front row in his final year at Ed Carpenter Racing in 2016.

Newgarden only has two top five Indy 500 finishes with Team Penske, a fourth place effort in 2019 and a fifth place effort in 2020. And after qualifying in the Fast Nine four times from 2012 to 2016, three of his five starts have come from behind the first four rows in one of Roger Penske’s cars.

But as the month of May gets underway today and IndyCar runs the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park, which Newgarden has won three times, it’s hard not to look ahead to the 106th running of the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing”.

And it’s hard to envision anybody other than Newgarden being the favorite by the time it rolls around on Sunday, May 29.

Team Penske are three for three to start the season after winning only three races all of last year, they took three of the top four positions at the Texas Motor Speedway oval, Newgarden has won two straight oval races going back to his win at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway last August, and the Indy 500 is the only puzzle piece missing from his already illustrious career.