A season of nightmares ended with the stuff of sweet dreams for Josef Newgarden on Sunday at Nashville Superspeedway.
Newgarden, who rallied after losing time during a round of pit stops with inside 40 laps to go, held off the leaders following a 12-lap dash to the finish to win Sunday’s NTT IndyCar Series Borchetta Bourbon Music City Grand Prix, ending a season in which varied tastes of bad luck found their way to the No. 2 team at Team Penske.
On Sunday, the Nashville-raised driver tasted victory close to home.
“Glad we got one without anything going wrong,” Newgarden said. “Happy to celebrate this team. They deserve it. It’s rewarding for our team. Tough, tough year, but good to get a win at the end.”
On Sunday, good fortune was finally on the side of Newgarden, whose Team Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin finished third for a podium finish. That finish was hardly easy, as he had to edge a surging Kyffin Simpson for third as second place went to Alex Palou, who celebrated his previously-clinched series title with donuts of his own in the track’s infield grass.
“It’s been an amazing season for us,” Palou said. “I just had the pleasure to be the driver of that No. 10 DHL Honda car, to get so many wins and so many podiums this year.”
Louis Foster narrowly clinched the series rookie of the year crown on Sunday as Robert Shwartzman was hit with a late-race blocking penalty.
Shwartzman was involved in one of multiple moments that sparked degrees of chaos headed toward the race’s midpoint. It all began around the race’s 52nd lap, when Palou had an issue with his right front tire while running second, but was able to quickly pit and not lose a large amount of time.
Then, on the race’s 82nd lap, when Shwartzman was a lap down, he made contact with David Malukas, who was running second, sending Malukas hard into the outside wall. He was reported by the AMR Safety Team as being awake and alert and transported to a local trauma center as a precaution for observation. As for Shwartzman, he was hit with a penalty for blocking.
Bad luck continued to find the race leaders on lap 127, just past the halfway point when Pato O’Ward, who had led more than 100 laps, made contact with the outside wall, ending his day. O’Ward’s finish of 24th carried him home with a second-place points standings finish, the best of his career.
The following pit stops brought even more adversity. Will Power‘s run among the top five was extinguished as his car stalled during his pit stop, and he finished 21st.
“I had a car to win, man. I really did,” Power said. “Just my mistake, it would have been nice to finish the season with a podium or a win.”
Another driver near the front, Colton Herta, was hit with a penalty for an unsafe release, and he’d end up 11th.
BORCHETTA MUSIC CITY GRAND PRIX RESULTS
Brad joined Frontstretch.com in 2020 and contributes to the site's 5 Points To Ponder column and other roles as needed. A graduate of the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communication, he has covered sports in some capacity for more than 20 years with coverage including local high school sports, college athletics and minor league hockey. Brad has received multiple awards for his work from the Georgia Press Association.