IndyCar: Newgarden crashes from lead, O’Ward wins Iowa Sunday race

Like he did on Saturday, Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden dominated the Salute to Farmers 300 presented by Google IndyCar race at Iowa Speedway Sunday, but it was not meant to be as Newgarden crashed on lap 231 of 300 when he ended up in the SAFER Barrier in turn 4  with a suspected issue with the right rear suspension.

When the green flag flew with 50 laps to go, Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward led from Newgarden’s Penske teammate Will Power, Ganassi’s Scott Dixon and Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin.

O’Ward and Power battled for 2nd much of the race and when Newgarden crashed they raced was for the lead.

With clean air out front, O’Ward slowly stretched his lead from Power all the way to the finish.

 

Will Power and Pato O’Ward battled for 2nd on Saturday and for the win on Sunday

Scott McLaughlin brought his Penske Chevy home 3rd to give Chevy a 1-2-3 of the podium.

Ganassi  Racing Hondas of Scott Dixon, Jimmie Johnson and Marcus Ericsson were 4-5-6.   Great finish for these drivers who started 18th, 13th and 15th respectively.

Kyle Kirkwood was the other driver to crash on lap 120 when he made contact with the SAFER Barrier in turn 2 when he hit dirty air in traffic after running three wide in turn 1 and 2.

 

Pato O’Ward

Pato’s 2nd Win for the Season    Penske Entertainment Joe Skibinski

“We had a great weekend. Obviously we were there, we were there to take advantage of an opportunity that got presented to us. I think even with him (Newgarden) not finishing the race, I think we still would have given him a hard time. There was still one more pit stop to go.”

“Yeah, I was positioning ourselves to do what we just did. Super proud of the boys in the pits. The car was fantastic. I knew it was just all about getting into the Penske sandwich because, yeah, Will was not making it any little easy on me. I knew Josef was going to do the same. It was one thing to get up there, but one thing to pass.”

“It just explains how hard it is, how difficult it can be whenever you’re going through the lap traffic, how you get some people, other people behind you are going to get them in a very different situation. That’s how you can lose or gain time.”

“I think the biggest thing is because everybody that’s fighting for the championship is having good weekends. No one is having bad weekends.”

“For us, we’ve thrown away and we’ve given away an easy hundred points just either whether it was a strategy or if it was I won’t mention the other ones. We’ve just thrown
away a lot of points that would have put us in a way better position of where we are right now.”

“I have no other choice but to try and claw back. We can just be more risky than others. I really don’t care. Four, five and six for me doesn’t really change anything. I don’t care for sixth or fourth. We need to go for one and two because we’ve already got a four and a three.”

“The only way to do that is to win because you’re not going to get those points by being consistently in the top five. I think if you’re in the lead, it would be a different story, but
we’re not.”

Will Power

Power finished 2nd          Photo by Brain Fahie/Autoracing1.com

” I think Chevy’s done a great job this year giving us drivability and horsepower. It definitely showed this weekend, all the Chevy cars were really strong.”

“Yeah, just lucky to be involved with these guys. They’re very, very good at their job.”
“I have been running consistently this year really. I mean, had a lot of podiums a lot of top fours. I know we got good cars here, so it was a matter of just being mistake-free. I felt like we were going to finish in the top five. That’s exactly what happened.”

“I have been trying to win around here for a long time. Been really wanting to win at this place, but keep coming up short.”

“Yeah, really happy with the weekend.”

Scott McLaughlin

Scott McLaughlin         Penske Entertainment by Joe Skibinksi

“Felt like we had a car to challenge for the podium yesterday. We managed to sort of pull it off today.”

“Midway through the race today, the car was a bit of a handful and I wasn’t too happy. My strategist got on the radio, calmed me down, as most of those guys on pit road do to us egomaniac drivers. Kind of brought us back to life.”

“Managed to get my head down, did some really good pit exchanges, managed to get ourselves into P4 there before the last caution. Then P3 on Dixon, which was a fun pass.
I really enjoyed that. It was a really good exchange with him all race. Hope he enjoyed it. Probably didn’t enjoy it as much as me, but it was definitely a lot of fun racing with him.”

“I wish we could race here every weekend, to be honest. It’s just bad ass. You can throw it on the outside, run two lanes. You can take air off the guy behind you, guy will go behind you. It’s wicked, you know.”

 

Marcus Ericsson

 

Ericsson and his Girlfriend

Marcus Ericsson almost lost the points lead this weekend.  Josef Newgarden’s incident left the Swede with a 15 point lead over Newgarden with five races to go.

“I’m looking forward to the Indianapolis this coming weekend even though it’s a road course now. Even on the road course we had the fourth-place finish there. That was what
kick-started our month of May.”

“I’m really excited about it. Like I said, I think this was our worst track on the calendar. I think the rest of the year we should be really strong everywhere. If the worst track of the calendar means we’re finishing four, five, six today, that’s pretty good, shows how strong Chip Ganassi Racing is as an organization.”

“Yeah, I’m excited about next week and the rest of the championship.”

 

Jimmie Johnson

American Legion #48     Penske Entertainment by Joe Skibinski

“I’m so happy to finally have some experience transfer from stockcars to INDYCARS. Just knowing where to run on the track at different times.”

“Yesterday early in the race there was some clean spots on the track that people were afraid to get up there, tiptoe along the edge. That was just something I was comfortable with doing.”

“It honestly reminded me a lot of running at Bristol, the way you just got to run right at the edge of the marbles, tip-toeing around that. And if you’re willing to get up that extra six or eight inches, it would pay off.”

“I think we had a little better handling car today. Made some adjustments overnight. Made us able to drive through the field.”

 

Race Results

Pos No Name Laps Behind Gap Led ST Engine Points Team
1 5 Pato O’Ward 300 0.000s 0.000s 66 7 Chevy 367 Arrow McLaren SP
2 12 Will Power 300 4.2476 4.2476 80 1 Chevy 395 Team Penske
3 3 Scott McLaughlin 300 9.4464 5.1988 0 5 Chevy 317 Team Penske
4 9 Scott Dixon 300 11.1499 1.7035 0 18 Honda 369 Chip Ganassi Racing
5 48 Jimmie Johnson 300 12.3251 1.1752 0 13 Honda 158 Chip Ganassi Racing
6 8 Marcus Ericsson 300 14.2340 1.9089 0 15 Honda 403 Chip Ganassi Racing
7 7 Felix Rosenqvist 300 17.6887 3.4547 0 9 Chevy 275 Arrow McLaren SP
8 18 David Malukas 300 18.3725 0.6838 1 14 Honda 204 Dale Coyne Racing with HMD
9 28 Romain Grosjean 300 19.5576 1.1851 0 10 Honda 245 Andretti Autosport
10 51 Takuma Sato 300 20.7325 1.1749 5 4 Honda 184 Dale Coyne Racing w/RWR
11 77 Callum Ilott 300 21.4930 0.7605 0 22 Chevy 150 Juncos Hollinger Racing
12 26 Colton Herta 299 1 LAPS 3.6618 0 12 Honda 278 Andretti Autosport w/Curb-Agajanian
13 10 Alex Palou 299 1 LAPS 14.1338 0 11 Honda 359 Chip Ganassi Racing
14 15 Graham Rahal 299 1 LAPS 0.8004 0 23 Honda 248 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
15 29 Devlin DeFrancesco 298 2 LAPS 12.5167 0 25 Honda 139 Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport
16 20 Conor Daly 298 2 LAPS 1.6493 0 3 Chevy 223 Ed Carpenter Racing
17 33 Ed Carpenter 297 3 LAPS 1 LAPS 0 19 Chevy 67 Ed Carpenter Racing
18 27 Alexander Rossi 296 4 LAPS 6.9314 0 21 Honda 265 Andretti Autosport
19 21 Rinus VeeKay 296 4 LAPS 6.0317 0 8 Chevy 254 Ed Carpenter Racing
20 45 Jack Harvey 296 4 LAPS 7.1377 0 6 Honda 148 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
21 06 Helio Castroneves 295 In Pit 9.4610 0 24 Honda 196 Meyer Shank Racing
22 4 Dalton Kellett 294 6 LAPS 1 LAPS 0 26 Chevy 94 AJ Foyt Enterprises
23 60 Simon Pagenaud 281 In Pit 12 LAPS 0 16 Honda 257 Meyer Shank Racing
24 2 Josef Newgarden 235 Contact 1 LAPS 148 2 Chevy 369 Team Penske
25 14 Kyle Kirkwood 117 Contact 0.5931 0 20 Chevy 126 AJ Foyt Enterprises
26 30 Christian Lundgaard 112 Mechanical 4.8038 0 17 Honda 208 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing

 

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