ELKHART LAKE, Wisc. — During Friday’s (June 20) practice for The XPEL Grand Prix at Road America, two-time NTT IndyCar Series champion Josef Newgarden set the fourth-fastest time in the opening 75 minutes of track time ahead of Sunday’s race.
This is only five days after Newgarden was part of a massive accident at World Wide Technology Raceway, where contact with Louis Foster sent the Tennessee native upside down.
“I didn’t see him,” Newgarden said of Foster. “I didn’t see him come across the track. I saw Louis up against the wall as I was exiting four. This is happening in like a couple seconds, right? Wasn’t really focused on him. I went through three. As we’re getting out of four, I was trying to make a move on Palou. I was actually going to try to go underneath him. When I was making that move off of four, I could see that Louis was sort of there, but it was still green.
“I didn’t see Louis until Palou went right. As soon as he went right, then I saw him coming across the track. I thought just… There wasn’t much else to do. If I go right, I was going to go into Palou. I had a big jump of speed on him. He had the advantage of seeing him before I did. Yeah, just bad timing. Really bad timing.”
Newgarden is looking to bounce back at Road America, a track that has given the two-time Indianapolis 500 winner two wins and six top-five finishes since IndyCar came back to America’s National Park of Speed in 2016.
But what’s crazier is that Newgarden has a bit of a history at Road America of bouncing back after having less than stellar results in the previous race.
Let’s turn the clock back to 2017. Newgarden crashes out of the race at Texas Motor Speedway in the race’s final 50 laps. The next race at Road America? Second place to Scott Dixon.
The following year at Texas, Newgarden had a vibration that forced him to pit, costing him four laps. The next race at Road America? A dominating victory where he led 53 of 55 laps.
In 2023, Newgarden finished 10th in IndyCar’s return to the streets of Detroit after racing for decades at Belle Isle. In the following race at Road America, he finished second.
Last year, Newgarden finished 26th at Detroit after running over his air hose on pit road and contact with Alex Palou at the Turn 3 hairpin. At Road America, he finished second to Will Power in a Team Penske podium sweep.
However, the racing gods giveth and the racing gods taketh away. In 2021, Newgarden dominated the race until a late restart and a gearbox problem took the win away.
The following race at Mid-Ohio gave Newgarden his first win of the season after his crew performed a late-night engine change after Newgarden raised concerns about his engine’s performance.
So while Newgarden is reeling from five finishes of 12th or worse in the first eight IndyCar races of 2025, Road America might provide the No. 2 Team Penske racer with the perfect opportunity to put his season back on track, so to speak.
Christopher DeHarde has covered IndyCar racing and the Road to Indy for various outlets since 2014. In addition to open wheel racing, DeHarde has also covered IMSA and various short track racing events around Indiana. Originally from New Orleans, DeHarde moved to the Indianapolis area in 2017 to further pursue a career as a motorsports writer.