[h=2]Newgarden's ahead of the curve[/h] Monday, 31 July 2017


By Robin Miller / Images by Mike Levitt/LAT & Scott LePage/LAT


When you put on that Team Penske driver's suit you are instantly a marked man, and expectations aren't a matter of if, but how soon. Wins and championships are a forgone conclusion, and your performance is evaluated and scrutinized like nobody else's.
In the litany of great racers that have driven for Roger Penske, some were instant home runs while others required a little gestation period.
Rick Mears won in his fourth start as a part-timer at Milwaukee in 1978 and came back in 1979 to capture the CART championship and first of his four Indianapolis 500s. Al Unser Jr. only required three starts to bag his first victory at Long Beach in 1994 on his way to eight victories and a title. Will Power scored his initial win for The Captain as a part-timer in 2009 at Edmonton in his fifth start before amassing eight poles and five victories in his first full-time campaign in 2010. Danny Sullivan captured Indy in his second start for Penske in 1985 while Sam Hornish's 2004 debut wound up in Victory Lane at Homestead.
But it took 17 starts for Paul Tracy to settle down and put up his first W in 1993 at Long Beach, while two-time F1 king Emerson Fittipaldi required 15 races to win for R.P. at Nazareth in 1990, and talented Juan Pablo Montoya needed 11 starts to shake off the rust in 2014 and triumph at Pocono.
And Simon Pagenaud went winless in 2015 before bouncing back to take his first checker at Long Beach in his 19th start in 2016, when he went on to earn the Verizon IndyCar Series championship.
That brings us to Josef Newgarden.
If replacing Montoya wasn't enough pressure, then looking across the transporter at Power, Pagenaud and Helio Castroneves certainly should be. But this kid obviously has the poise to go along with his speed and race craft – and it was all on display last Sunday at Mid-Ohio.
The 25-year-old native of Tennessee put a move on Power that would have made Russell Westbrook proud as he used a masterful fake to snatch the lead away from the pole-sitter and run away with his third win of 2017.
"Will was good but I felt we were a little stronger at the start," said Newgarden, who vaulted into the point lead with four races remaining. "I think Will was struggling a little more than me, and I just didn't want to wait behind him. We were either going to pass him on track in a straight-up pass or pass him on the pit cycle. That was our plan. I didn't want to wait until the pits. I felt like I had an opportunity, so I just tried to time something and pull a move on him.
"He gave me a lot of racing room like a great teammate. I think he knew we were a little bit quicker. So he gave me good room, and once we got past him, I thought we were really fast."
In leading 73 of the final 78 laps and moving seven points ahead of teammate Castroneves and eight clear of Scott Dixon, Newgarden was never pressed and in total command of a race he should have already won twice but was eliminated by pit incidents.
That's what is expected of a Penske driver: Qualify up front, lead, close the deal and move on. And it's clear the young man who got a lifeline from Sarah Fisher, Wink Hartman and Ed Carpenter to showcase his skills before being snatched up by The Captain understands the deal.
"From the outside, people look at it, you're going to arguably the best team in the paddock with the most history in IndyCar," continued Newgarden (pictured above being congratulated by Power in victory lane). "You've got to look at it and say you should be great now, right? I think that's what the perception is from the outside. There are parts of you that would hope that's true. You come to this group, and you would hope you find success pretty fast because everything's in order and working how it should. There's no one more polished than Team Penske.
"But with the way the series works now, it's very difficult. It's not just, hey, hop in one of the best cars, and you're just going to kick everyone's butt if you've got the talent. That's not how it works. Where we got very good at ECR was I'd been there for five years – different iterations of the team, different personnel, but I'd been there five years. I knew where we went with setup and direction for every single track. Every year we went to a track, I knew where we were and where we're going for this year.
"With Team Penske, I had none of that. Totally new setups. Completely different philosophies. So I had to like adjust myself to something I didn't actually like at the beginning of the year. I didn't really love it to start with. You just start molding it to yourself, figuring out how it works for you, and you just get better and better, hopefully."
Tracy, now an IndyCar analyst for NBCSN, knows the drill all too well and that's why he's so impressed with Newgarden.
"It's a whole new world at Penske," said P.T., who won 10 times with Team Penske but butted heads with R.P. before being cut loose after 1997. "He's got three teammates with a lot of experience, a new engineer, a new approach and all those expectations.