Pigs, meteors & donuts: How Newgarden ended a freakish IndyCar season on a high
- Archie O’Reilly
- 9 hours ago
- 13 min read
When he took the lead at Nashville Superspeedway on Sunday, Josef Newgarden half expected a meteor to fall from the sky. And if the nature of this season was anything to go by, it probably would have directly struck his No.2 car.
It had been a bad day to be at the front of the field. Just before the first pit cycle, Álex Palou punctured from second place, shortly followed by a more dramatic moment for David Malukas as he collided with a backmarker to end his race - also from the second position.
Then on Lap 127, Pato O’Ward suffered a tyre failure from the race lead. Will Power inherited the net lead, only to have a catastrophic pit stop, falling not only down the order but off the lead lap altogether. Then the charging Colton Herta was penalised for speeding in pit lane as another contender fell by the wayside.
It would have been perfectly in keeping with a freakish 2025 season for Newgarden and his third of the Team Penske garage to have been struck down by similar strife.
“I’ve become so oblivious to it at this point,” Newgarden reacted. “I’m not even looking for it anymore. If it happened, I would expect it. So I was just driving.”
It has been a disastrous year for Penske. They endured a 15-race winless run, dating back to the penultimate round of the 2024 season, until Power finally broke the team’s duck in Portland. It was the team’s worst drought since also going 15 races without victory between the 2007 and 2008 seasons.
Up until Power’s Round 15 success in Portland, Penske only had five podium results across its three cars - two of which came in the same race at Iowa Speedway. Frankly, it feels as though almost everything that could have gone wrong, seems to have gone wrong.
Some of that does fall on levels of execution not completely up to the usual ’Penske Perfect’ standard. There have also been times where Penske have lacked the one-lap or race pace compared to the competition.
But the reality behind not knitting weekends together has mostly been inexplicable strokes of bad luck. And often.
“I’ve seen the win potential in this team all year so many different times, whether it’s Indianapolis or it’s a place like Long Beach or St. Petersburg,” Newgarden insisted. “Actually, I think the glaring weak point for us right now is road courses.
“But there’s been a lot of strength across the calendar.”
There is no refuting that point. It is not as though Penske has seen a dramatic loss of performance for the most part. But the statistics lay things bare; they have recorded 12 DNFs in 2025, plus Scott McLaughlin’s freak pre-race crash at the Indianapolis 500.
June’s visit to World Wide Technology Raceway - better known as Gateway - was the crescendo of their woes, with all three cars innocently taken out from win contention.
These non-finishes have come in all manner of ways - very few courtesy of driver errors. It has been an astonishing combination of engine issues, fuel pressure issues, hybrid issues, tyre issues, suspension issues and even seat belt issues. Add to that list the multiple instances of simply being innocent victims in accidents too.
Then throw in the mix the toils of the Month of May, with a technical infringement in qualifying leading to Power and Newgarden being moved to the rear of the field and ultimately resulting in the removal of essentially the entire leadership team.
It has been an unsettling year of lots to overcome on and off-track for one of IndyCar’s finest operations, adding up to this historically bad campaign.
“It’s been a difficult year for us,” said Jonathan Diuguid, new Penske Racing president. “We’ve got a good, strong core. Didn’t mean that we didn’t have difficult conversations about where we needed to be.”
The season has ended for the 17-time series champions with Power their best-placed driver in points. But having had at least one driver in the top three in the standings every year since 2007, Power finishing only ninth marks the worst finish for Penske’s highest-placed driver in the championship since 1999.
McLaughlin rounds out the year in 10th - one point back from Power - with Newgarden 40 points further back in 12th. Even that, despite being his worst finish since 2014, feels like Newgarden has salvaged something having been floating close to 20th at points this season.
It has been Newgarden hit hardest by Penske’s bizarre all-round year of adversity. Even in the St. Petersburg opener, where he finished third for one of only three podiums this season, he could have won without a fueling issue. But things quickly spiralled much more extensively, starting with seat belt failure confining him to back of the pack in Long Beach.
He charged from the last row into win contention before the midway point in the Indy 500, only to be hit with a fuel-pressure problem. There quickly followed three successive retirements at Gateway, Road America and Mid-Ohio - both through others’ incidents and his own doing.
Toronto established another fresh way of his race being ended, finding his car on top of that of Jacob Abel with nowhere to go to avoid the stricken Dale Coyne Racing machine. Only a month prior, he had also been airborne but ended up upside down at Gateway.
In Portland, he was running well but finished 24th after being one of very few drivers to ever find themselves spun by Scott Dixon. That was Newgarden’s seventh result of 22nd or worse this year - the same total he has top 10s across the season.
All of this considered, ending the season with a race in which all of the leaders appeared to have a curse looming over them, it would have been cruelly befitting of Newgarden’s seemingly doomed year for him to have been swept up in yet another moment of misfortune.
But to his relief - and maybe surprise - that never came.
“Nothing went diabolically wrong,” he smiled. “I tried to throw it in the bin in the final pit stop. On the edge but not over it. A meteor didn’t come out of the sky, which was nice.”
Newgarden started sixth for IndyCar’s second visit to the 1.33-mile Nashville Superspeedway since its return to the calendar last year. He remained securely in the top 10 for the race’s opening exchanges but was, early on, more of an ‘extra’ than protagonist.
But patience and measure, massaging and refining his car, is part of the masterplan for Newgarden on ovals - a reason why he is one of the discipline’s absolute greatest. And by the Lap 100 caution restart, he had cycled his way up to fourth and was in the game.
The O’Ward-induced caution that followed is where Newgarden really rose to the fore. He had to dispatch an off-strategy Alexander Rossi to take the race lead but did so with relative ease. And at the head of the pack, he came into his own.
He feels at home at the front. A distinct sense of normality.
That familiarity is not just because of the 31 victories Newgarden entered the weekend with. Despite the nature of his year, he has still regularly been at the front - particularly on ovals. There has just always been something denying him from being there at the finish.
Take the Iowa doubleheader, for instance. Newgarden was utterly dominant but a pit cycle denied Race 1 victory and two untimely cautions prevented what felt like a certain win again the following day.
But on Sunday in Nashville, at long last, he did not find himself entangled in the mayhem.
“It felt like a normal day in a lot of respects,” Newgarden explained. “It was not an easy race. I did not have the car where I wanted it at the start right away. I’m like: ‘Okay, we’re nowhere where we need to be. Let’s be patient.’
“We just did our thing like we always do: assessed everybody, hung there, went when we needed to go. We got the car in a really good spot in the end. I was like: ‘Now we have a race-winning car. Let’s close the deal.’ That whole sequence felt very normal to me.”
Newgarden lost the lead in the final pit sequence, finding himself undercut by Palou and overcut by McLaughlin. But at the head of the field, Palou found himself stuck when he reached traffic. And Penske were back to their usual imperious selves on that front.
McLaughlin and promptly Newgarden dispatched of the trapped Palou and in hand scythed through traffic in a manner which the four-time champion could not. And on Lap 204, Newgarden was back in pursuit of his teammate when the New Zealander ran up high and glanced the Turn 2 wall.
The caution promptly fell but Newgarden had already pounced on his teammate’s error - another leader in jeopardy - to lead again.
“I’ll be straight up with you, I was about to pass him,” Newgarden admitted. “I didn’t care. I was like: ‘Whatever.’ That’s a real answer for you.
“We were in prime position to seal the victory. That was the only thing in my mind: ‘Let’s close the deal here.’ When you get an opportunity to close the deal in an IndyCar race, you want to do that. Harder than it looks. It’s like climbing a mountain to get to that point.
“They’re giving me this scorecard: ‘This is how many laps. This is what you need to do.’ I’m looking at my tools, looking at everything, planning how I need to drive this last 12 or 13 laps when it goes green. That’s what’s going through my mind.”
Newgarden has learned, in a season where so much of the uncontrollable has scuppered him, that the most important thing is to simply control the controllables. If he left no stone unturned but was struck by misfortune, it would be easier to take than knowing he did not maximise his race.
“Genuinely, you’ve got to focus on just doing the best job that you can,” he said. “The same on the team side. If you do that, you leave, you do the best job you could, you can be satisfied to some degree leaving the track. That was my only focus.
“I had a little bit of a mistake there at that last pit stop. If that had hurt us ultimately for the result, I would have been bummed by that because that was in my control. But that was the focus. I just was trying to hit my marks as best that I could.”
Newgarden did indeed hit his marks, expertly managing the restart to stay ahead of Palou and take the chequered flag. In his eyes, it was an archetypal, perfectly-executed Team Penske day, inspired by the team’s depth in skills and leadership - no matter any internal instability this year.
With McLaughlin coming home in third for the second consecutive event, it caps off what has been a somewhat resurgent end to the season. Inside the final three rounds, Penske have two victories and a total of four podiums - almost matching the 14 races prior.
It does not salvage the season by their standards but at least allows some momentum to build into a long six-month off-season.
“When you’re not winning, you can question everything,” Diuguid assessed. “You can question Josef’s performance, to the pit crew, to the car setup, to reliability - everything that affected our year.
“We really have to sit down and focus on our processes, try to trust in what you believe is right. I think what we’ve seen over the past couple races is that the processes work. We have a little bit more work to do to get back to the top of where we’re used to being.
“In general, it’s easy to get sidetracked, get down on yourself, questioning everything. That’s where the team excelled; we just sat and talked about the facts, how we need to improve together.”
There were times where it could have been easy to get down about the season. But the whole Penske outfit kept plugging away. It has been a show of resilience from the entire organisation to rebound from a year of so many collective setbacks.
That makes the return to form and return to Victory Lane that bit more special.
“It was a trying year for the team,” Newgarden acknowledged. “For us just to stay focused… it’s one thing individually but I think it’s even harder from a whole team standpoint to do that.
“Proud of the team. More than anything, when I show up, I’m ready to see the team rewarded for the effort. I really mean that. You have no idea what goes on. It is gruelling to get to these races and to get through the weekend, put a car on the track that’s capable of winning, hitting all your marks every second of the race. It’s just so difficult to do.
“To get that reward for the team... we had it in Portland, which was great for everybody. We had it today. That’s probably the highlight for me, just to see everybody rewarded for the effort and what they put in the end.”
Newgarden is a leader and the glue of his No.2 crew as he comes to the end of his ninth season at the team. Camaraderie never wavered through the testing times.
He exclaimed “for the pigs” after exiting his car as a victor for the first time this season - aimed at crew chief Chad Gordon. Newgarden did not go the whole hog in explaining the meaning but it was in reference to a morale-lifting speech given by Gordon the weekend prior.
“He gave an incredible pre-race speech in Milwaukee,” Newgarden explained. “It involved pig farming. He had a stuffed pig today. It was for the pigs. I don’t know how to elaborate much more on this. He gave a great team speech and we all felt it.
“We rallied behind that at the end of today. It was with team morale. Very wholesome.”
The win sees Newgarden tie Al Unser Jr. for ninth all-time on 32 victories, extending to 11 successive seasons featuring a win. Though records are something Newgarden has learned to fixate less on over time.
“I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t care about that anymore. I really didn’t,” Newgarden said of prolonging his streak of winning seasons. “I know we have that. But what does it matter? I used to be a big stats guy. I don’t care about stats anymore.”
The celebrations from Newgarden after crossing the line were emblematic of the relief he was feeling. He powered down the frontstretch with the intention of putting on a show of donuts, spun up the rear tyres and…
… it is fair to say things did not quite go to plan.
“I got the angle wrong,” Newgarden laughed. “I’ll just leave is there.”
He somewhat managed to style out his botched job at the donuts, rotating only 90 degrees before coming perilously close to snatching his front wing on the SAFER barrier.
So rather than try and clumsily rectify the situation, he enacted a repeat of his iconic Indy 500-winning celebrations by exiting his car, heading for a gap in the fence and joining the crowd. He climbed a little before taking a seat among those seated on the frontstretch.
“I wanted to go in the crowd,” he added. “I thought that was cool if they opened the gate.
“I almost lied about [the donuts]. ‘I was just going to half-slide.’ But I messed it up, unfortunately. I was going to burn that thing to the ground too. That’s the saddest thing for me. Chevrolet probably wouldn’t have been happy about that. It’s probably good what happened, to be quite honest with you. I was going to go until it stopped.”
It is a first victory for Newgarden in his native state of Tennessee. It meant that little bit more winning for the first time since Gateway last August on home turf.
And Nashville Superspeedway is home turf in the truest sense for Newgarden. As a young race fan and budding racer, he frequented the track as a child and has many fond childhood memories of watching a whole host of racing at the oval.
“[The win is] definitely up there,” he suggested. “This was a hard race to win. There were no gimmes. Got such depth across the board. Everybody is so close as far as the competitive landscape, it’s just hard to find an advantage on anyone nowadays. It’s satisfying when you win a race in this environment.
“Then to win it at my hometown was really gratifying. I used to come here when was 12, 13 years old and I would watch stock car races, IndyCar races. I’d watch anything that came here. I sat in those stands, wherever I was able to go at the end of the race.
“Had no idea that I would have a racing career at that point in my life. It’s cool to come full circle and to be so close to home. I love being here in Nashville for the season finale. I like it for IndyCar. It’s a great destination for us. We should continue that tradition.
“Whether it’s here or somewhere else in the future, as long as we’re in the Nashville vicinity, I’m going to be a happy guy.”
And it was good to see Newgarden happy. There have been times this year where he has been abnormally downcast - understandably so in the face of such a turbulent year. But a lot of undue negativity grew around him, rather than compassion.
He became snappy and concise in interviews amid barrages of unwarranted criticism and appeared to close himself off a little. A trying few years, going from two titles in three seasons, to three successive runner-up finishes, then a downturn of fifth, eighth and now 12th in the championship was always going to take its toll.
But he ends this season on a happier note - and with a return of the more bubbly and happy Josef Newgarden the IndyCar world has grown so fond of over the years. He knows 2026 has got to see big improvement but there is some rare-for-2025 positivity to latch onto.
“This win, it’s not even like it’s validation. I saw the potential of it all year for the group,” Newgarden exacted. “I don’t really feel differently about it being realised. I’m just happy for everybody. Happy that they’re able to enjoy it.
“This season, tough year on the team. The schedule was tough this year. Everybody just kept working, kept their head down, kept doing their jobs. If anything, that’s what’s gratifying for us as a unit. It definitely can send us into the off-season and we can go to work.
“At the end of the day, we need to go to work. We need to have a better 2026 and we’re ready to do that.”
Something of a reset point will be a good chance to reenergise - both for Newgarden and the wider team - after the tumult of the past six months. There is now off-time to relight some of the fire that naturally fades in the frustration of a brutally relentless season.
“Candidly I’m looking forward to it,” Newgarden said. “I’d like to go away and start to miss it again. Sometimes that’s what you want, is to miss something. That’s my plan.”
