IndyCar: Top free agent off the market, signs multi-year extension

Toward the beginning of the 2024 IndyCar season, it was revealed that Josef Newgarden's contract with Team Penske was set to expire at the end of the year.

Not that there was ever any doubt, but days after winning his second consecutive Indy 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the 33-year-old Hendersonville, Tennessee native has officially signed a multi-year contract extension to remain behind the wheel of the No. 2 Chevrolet for the foreseeable future.

In a loaded free agent class featuring the likes of Arrow McLaren's Alexander Rossi, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing's Christian Lundgaard, and Ed Carpenter Racing's Rinus VeeKay, Newgarden was the clear top driver, and after Newgarden hinted that an agreement was on the horizon, it has now been confirmed that there will be no changes to his status at Team Penske.

The first major domino in what should be another interesting IndyCar silly season will have to fall elsewhere.

Josef Newgarden to continue with Team Penske

Newgarden joined Team Penske in 2017, replacing Juan Pablo Montoya, and he has had nothing but success with Roger Penske's team.

In seven full seasons behind the wheel of the No. 2 Chevrolet prior to 2024, Newgarden secured 26 victories, with at least three in six of those seven years. The one season in which he did not win three races, he still won twice and finished runner-up in the championship standings.

No other driver earned more than 16 wins during that stretch.

Newgarden won the 2017 and 2019 titles with four-win seasons, and he has posted just two finishes lower than second in the standings for the team, both fifth place efforts. He secured a career-high five wins in 2022 en route to one of his three runner-up finishes in points.

Newgarden, who has won nine of the 12 most recent oval races, won the Indy 500 for the first time in 12 tries last year, and last weekend, he became the first driver to win the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing" in back-to-back years since former Team Penske driver Helio Castroneves won it in 2001 and 2002.

Through five of 17 races on the 2024 schedule, Newgarden sits in seventh place in the point standings, though he would be in second had he not been disqualified from the season opener on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida and stripped of his victory.

Newgarden is just one of six drivers in IndyCar history with at least 30 victories, two championships, and two Indy 500 wins. Three of them are named Unser (Al, Al Jr., and Bobby), and the other two are named A.J. Foyt and Dario Franchitti.