Newgarden’s bizarre 2025 IndyCar season, “hard reset” & the future
- Archie O’Reilly
- 2 hours ago
- 9 min read
“I just have a pothole detector,” Josef Newgarden exclaims. “Instead of not seeing where they are, I’m totally going to find them this year.”
It was that kind of season for Josef Newgarden and Team Penske in 2025. Bewildering, for the most part. As hard as they tried, hardly anything was going right. And things were not just failing to fall their way; they often went calamitously wrong.
It was a campaign rife with those metaphorical potholes. Each one slightly different - an eclectic mix of shapes and sizes - but each nearly as abrupt and damaging as the last.
“If I can just avoid them without falling into the crevices, I think we’re going to be better off,” he adds. “I’m almost 90 percent positive that if we fall in less potholes, we’re going to be better. So that’s my strategy right now. It’s perfect for Indiana; you can crush the [Interstate] 465.”
At the end of it all, a mostly wretched six months concluded with a 12th-place finish in the championship for Newgarden: his worst yet from nine seasons with Penske. It continued a downward trend for the two-time champion, who after three runner-up finishes following his most recent title (in 2019) has now finished fifth, eighth and 12th in the last three years.
All said, it was Newgarden’s lowest championship finish since 2014, when he was racing with Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing in only his third year in the series. But it says a lot about the nature of his season that 12th was ultimately something of a success, given he languished nearer 20th than the top 10 for much of the season.
Even entering the final round of the season at home in Tennessee at Nashville Super Speedway, he was 16th in points and staring down the barrel of a first finish outside the top 15 since his rookie season in 2012. Winning that race could not even provide much solace.
“I don’t think Nashville really does anything, to be honest,” Newgarden assessed on IndyCar’s annual media days last week. “I was just happy the year was over. It will be a hard reset, for sure, when you come to St. Pete [to start the new season].”
Before it promptly turned into something Newgarden was desperate to forget, the 2025 campaign started on something of a high note with a third-place result on the Floridian streets of St. Petersburg. But even that could have been better if not for a fuelling issue, which may have proved an omen for the catalogue of mishaps that followed.
From there, a runner-up finish at Iowa Speedway was Newgarden’s only other podium until Nashville marked his first win in over a year. He failed to finish five of the 17 races, including a three-race mid-season stretch of World Wide Technology Raceway, Road America and Mid-Ohio, while also being confined to last place at Long Beach due to a seat belt issue.
The retirements spanned flipping upside down while leading and, separately, ending up on top of another car, to a mechanical failure at the Indianapolis 500 having recovered from the rear of the field into win contention by the midway point of his three-peat attempt. The latter was building into a story for the ages before ending in gut-wrenching anticlimax.
Even the better weekends results wise were often littered with misfortune. Newgarden dominated the Iowa doubleheader weekend, only to be denied Race 1 victory in a late pit stop cycle despite leading 232 of the 250 laps, before twice falling foul of ill-timed cautions in Race 2, which he had once been in total control of.
At the climax of the season, an average race finish of 15.7 placed him 17th among the full-time field. Seven results of 22nd or lower matched his tally of top-10 finishes for the year.
“Be more consistent,” Newgarden insisted on what needs to improve in 2026. “We just can’t have as many bad results as we had. A lot of them could have been different so we’ve just got to focus on being more consistent. It’s simple to say but that’s what it will come down to. If we don’t want to finish 12th in the standings, we’ve got to finish more races.”
Newgarden was not an anomaly within the Penske ranks, either, with the team plagued by the bizarre inundation of strife on at least one car almost every weekend across the campaign.
Will Power finished as their best-placed driver at eighth in the standings, which was the lowest finish for Penske’s top-positioned driver since 1999. Not since 2007 had they failed to have a single driver finish top three in points, while a 15-race winless run snapped late in the season was their longest streak without victory since 2007/2008.
There is no question they were largely let down by bad luck, but there is an argument that there were lapses in the usual ‘Penske Perfect’ execution and shortcomings in speed. They were scarcely competition for the ultra-efficiency of Chip Ganassi Racing, spearheaded by Álex Palou, and were often usurped by Arrow McLaren as the lead Chevy outfit.
The off-season will have been a welcome relief for most within the Penske IndyCar ranks after a season that was bound to take its toll. It has been a chance for both respite and valuable reflection on how to claw back the deficit to the likes of Ganassi, who levelled Penske’s record of 17 IndyCar crowns in 2025 and have won five of the last six titles.
For Newgarden, as he looks to exit the rut he found himself within and correct the downwards trajectory of championship finishes, the off-season has offered an equally important chance to reset. As it has often been for him, particularly in recent years.
This time around, he had the joy of welcoming a second child too.
“The off-season has been great,” Newgarden admitted. “I would say it’s been similar to previous off-seasons. I don’t have much to report from it. It’s been good. Everything has been normal. We had another kid so it’s been a little busy. Other than that, everybody is healthy, which is the only thing that matters at the end of the day.”
Within the Penske ranks, it has been a chance for things to stabilise. As much as it was disastrous on the track, 2025 was hugely unsettling off-track too. Three of the team’s most senior figures losing their jobs, after a rules breach in Indianapolis 500 qualifying, during IndyCar’s biggest race week of the year was always bound to be destabilising.
The subsequent period of the season played out with uncertainty in the leadership department, addressed in July as Porsche Penske Motorsport sportscar stalwart Jonathan Diuguid was named team president and Travis Law took over as competition director. But even then, the off-season was always going to be critical to steady the ship.
A remarkable depth of talent is always a feature at Penske, but ahead of 2026, there are new-look aspects of the team from within that pool of high-end personnel.
“Certainly we have a lot of changes,” Newgarden explained. “I think the core of the team is very similar to what people will have known with Team Penske. A lot of that is not changing. It will very much be Team Penske like we’ve always known it.
“Some of the structure is going to be different. Some of the way we operate will be a little bit different. Change can be a good thing. We’re going to look to be better versions of ourselves coming into this year. We obviously hold ourselves very accountable for a high standard. We’re trying to just be the best versions of ourselves as we possibly can.”
These alterations behind the scenes meant there will likely be some changes operationally moving forward. Nothing major - but change nonetheless.
“The way we debrief, probably communication flow… a lot of mundane things,” Newgarden said of what may be adjusted. “A lot of process-driven things I think will be different - almost refreshed. There’s a workflow that will be slightly different; we’ll have a little cadence that will be slightly different on a race weekend. Hopefully it will be a good, positive change.”
At the heart of the change at Penske, Newgarden welcomes a new teammate for the first time since Scott McLaughlin joined the team for the 2021 season. In a first adjustment to the lineup since downsizing to a three-car operation in 2022, Power has departed after 17 years, replaced by 24-year-old David Malukas.
Newgarden himself has never known a world at Penske without Power. It was particularly strange for him when participating as the Chevy car in a two-car tyre test at Phoenix Raceway last month, with the Honda representative Power, debuting for Andretti Global.
Adding to that, Ron Ruzewski, who departed Penske as managing director as part of the leadership dismissals in May, was by Power’s side as the pair reunite at Andretti.
“That was weird,” Newgarden asserted. “It was more weird seeing Ron. I was like: ‘Ron! What the heck?’ I wanted the debrief with Ron. I was like: ‘We like this tyre, right?’ It was so silly. I’m like: ‘What are you doing over there?’ Both him and Will. That was very weird. It’s going to take some time to get used to that, that we’re not on the same squad.”
This coming season will be the first time Newgarden is the most senior driver in Penske’s IndyCar ranks given Power, going on 45 at season’s start, has departed. But while a self-admitted introvert, Newgarden has always conducted himself as a leader anyway and has never shirked using his voice internally.
For that reason, even now as the oldest of the crop at 35 - even if by only two-and-a-half years, though still significantly more seasoned in IndyCar than McLaughlin - there is not going to be any marked change in his standing.
“You know what? I am the old guy, totally. I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for 15 years,” he uttered. “I’ve always had a strong sense for what I’ve wanted. That part’s really not going to change. Whether I was young or now I’m older, I’ll still have the same projection in my voice on what I think we need to be doing. That part is going to feel similar.”
While it will be unusual not having Power around, Newgarden is excited for Malukas and keen to help the new addition, who is over a decade his junior. There are parallels to when Newgarden joined the Penske squad from Ed Carpenter Racing as a 26-year-old hotshot nine years ago.
With three victories and a fourth-place championship finish to his name by that point, Newgarden was undoubtedly more established when he joined Penske than Malukas is now. But he is not questioning whether Malukas can be a success.
“I think Little Dave’s going to be great. Honestly, I think he’s going to do a stellar job,” Newgarden implored. “You can just feel the air, I think some people are like: ‘Why is Dave in this seat?’ I think he’s really good and I think he’s going to do an excellent job.
“It’s hard to predict anything with great certainty but he’s going to be supported super well. We’ve always been an open-book team. It’s a matter of if it works or not; you sink or you swim. Time is going to tell on that but I think he’s going to do a great job.
“He’s smart. He’s fast. He’s definitely got the capability to win races. I’m not going to be surprised if we see him win races earlier than later. As long as he shows up and is as fast as he’s always been, has great feedback, that’s all we can ask. He’s going to be just fine then.”
While there is more ‘new’ than normal at Penske, which could signify a new dawn, Newgarden insists nothing feels too notably different. But there is a bullishness and confidence that a refreshed Penske can rebound from the toils of last year.
“There’s a Lex Luthor. We are good to go; we’ve got everybody here. We are the Evil Empire about to strike,” Newgarden laughed. “Just wait. We’re coming full attack.
“I mean, I don’t know. I want to tell you: ‘Yeah, it feels all different.’ [But] it feels similar in a lot of ways. Obviously we’re going to have some changes [but it] feels like business as usual in a lot of respects. I’m excited. It’s that time of year where the cadence is starting to pick up.”
This is believed to be a contract year for Newgarden. When asked about that on media day - put to him that team owners had expressed interest and he was atop the list of free agents for 2027 - he let out a knowing smirk as the question unfolded.
Maybe just because he knew what was coming and knew instantly the line he was to give.
The inevitable, with a brief stutter: “I’m always… I’m just focused on the next task. Right now for me that’s St. Petersburg. That’s my focus.”
Newgarden is once again striving to bounce back and rediscover his championship-winning form. Applicable this season more than ever, in his 10th year with Penske. And if it is to be his last with them, one of the team’s greatest drivers will want to bow out on a high.
