Newgarden resists Ericsson to end Penske IndyCar win drought

Josef Newgarden ended his and Penske’s winless record in IndyCar this year with victory at Mid Ohio, on the anniversary of the team’s first series win 50 years ago.

Newgarden has been on pole for the previous two races and continued that run at Mid-Ohio, but that has been no guarantee for the driver who’s suffered a spate of bad luck this year despite leading the second highest number of laps in the season.

He delivered a textbook start of the race while chaos ensued behind. First Felix Rosenqvist was spun by Romain Grosjean at Turn 4 while James Hinchcliffe clipped team-mate Ryan Hunter-Reay into a spin at the same time.

On the restart shortly after, Scott Dixon squeezed Will Power at Turn 5 while passing for fourth and clipped Power into a spin, and then Power was hammered by Ed Jones, Power stationary and unseen in the smoke of his spin.

Newgarden managed the race almost effortlessly from the following restart to the first stops, when the first sign that his bad luck may be over occurred.

Andretti’s Colton Herta had an issue with his fuel hose while running second place, gifting Newgarden a near seven-second lead over Marcus Ericsson.

Ericsson eroded Newgarden’s lead slightly, but after the last round of stops Newgarden emerged clear and held the advantage by a similar margin.

It wasn’t simple though, much like anything for Newgarden and Penske this year. Ericsson began to erode the lead after the last stop and in the last 10 laps he closed at a searing pace.

Usually Newgarden is unflappable in these situations but because of what has happened earlier in the season, you just felt Ericsson may have the advantage.

He was in striking distance of Newgarden across the finish line, but he was still 0.8s in arrears, making sure an American driver won on the July 4th weekend.

Mark Donohue took the Penske team’s first win, at Pocono, in 1971, and it was fitting Newgarden ended such a tough run for the team on this particular anniversary weekend.

An extremely close battle for the podium could have effectively been taken by eight drivers as a train ran to the end of the race.

Ericsson’s Ganassi team-mates Alex Palou and Scott Dixon held third and fourth in the closing stages, but Alexander Rossi, Graham Rahal and impressive risers Pato O’Ward and Grosjean circled late on.

O’Ward and Grosjean scythed through the field early on through the drama to move up from 18th and 20th respectively, and ran in the top 10 while deviating on strategy in the first stops. O’Ward went long and Grosjean went for the undercut.

Grosjean jumped early frontrunner Rinus VeeKay with that strategy, but then it was O’Ward’s turn to do the passing as he usurped Grosjean in the last round of stops and took on a fresh set of soft tyres as opposed to Grosjean’s used hards.

However, Grosjean made a mistake at the Keyhole just before the last 10 laps ensued, gifting Herta a position as he then attacked Graham Rahal for sixth and looked like he could go on a real rebound run.

However, a last lap issue for Herta, unsighted by TV cameras, dropped him from seventh to 13th.

The rest of the drivers struggled to make a pass running nose-to-tail, and it was Palou ahead of Dixon to make it three Ganassi cars in the top four.

Palou also extended his points lead.

Andretti’s Rossi took fifth, ahead of Rahal, Grosjean and O’Ward.

Santino Ferrucci returned to the third Rahal Letterman Lanigan entry for this race and could only start 22nd, but made use of good strategy and the train for third slowing each other down to close in late on, taking ninth ahead of team-mate Takuma Sato.

Race Results