Josef Newgarden wins a wild Indianapolis 500 | KEN WILLIS
INDIANAPOLIS — A long time coming?
Yep, in so many ways.
Which explains a spontaneous expression of relief and joy few have ever seen and fewer have ever experienced.
Josef Newgarden, a shining light in IndyCar racing for over a decade — two-time series champion but never an Indianapolis 500 winner — made his 27th victory, in America’s Memorial Day Weekend classic, quite memorable.
“Everyone kept asking why I hadn’t won this race,” Newgarden said from the glow of Victory Lane. “They look at you like a failure if you don’t win it. I’m just so thankful.”
The 32-year-old Tennessee native was decorated in familiar Indy fashion, which screams anything but failure: The traditional wreath around his shoulders, a new Indy 500 ring on his finger, and a fresh milk bath glistening on his smiling face.
It must be said, of course, to be deemed the winner of the 107th Indianapolis 500, you first had to be labeled a survivor.
Chaos.
Additional chaos.
Near disaster.
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And in the end, an unprecedented manner in which to finally complete the 2023 Indy 500.
“I felt it was an unfair and dangerous end to the race,” runner-up Marcus Ericsson said.
He might have a point.
As much as we hate to see a race end under caution, Sunday was wild enough to get you rethinking things. A pair of red flags followed late multi-car crashes, one of which saw a dislodged wheel soar toward the Turn 2 grandstands like a missile.
In real time, there was no way to tell if the wheel had carried over the end of the bleachers and avoided carnage. Meanwhile, Kyle Kirkwood was the racer missing that wheel, but it didn’t matter because he was sliding on his roof down the backstretch.
Kirkwood would eventually exit his car bruised but uninjured, and the wheel indeed cleared the fans and clanged violently off an unoccupied car in a prime parking spot. The owner of that Chevy Cruze may not feel the relief, but everyone else does.
That ugliness brought the first red flag, which lasted 13 minutes. On the first lap of the restart with eight laps left, Pato O’Ward lost his lead at the green and tried to take it back entering Turn 3, only to get pinched and kick-start another multi-car crash that brought out the second red flag, which also lasted 13 minutes.
Another restart with four laps remaining didn’t last long before one final crash, and it appeared Ericsson would get his second straight Indy 500, only under yellow.
Maybe it was the lingering shivers from seeing that wheel fly toward the fans, and just the nagging feeling IndyCar was courting further mayhem, or worse, with the red flags, but suddenly a yellow-flag finish didn’t seem as distasteful as usual.
Also, as the drivers were puttering around Lap 197 under caution, there just weren’t enough laps left for anything resembling a normal restart — and “normal” isn’t an abbreviated pace lap followed by a one-lap dash.
Or at least it didn’t used to be.
But what a lap it was, with Newgarden overtaking Ericsson for the lead coming off Turn 2, barreling through Turns 3 and 4, and finally going to the serpentine maneuver down the long front straight to break Ericsson’s drafting hopes and blunt the momentum he desperately needed but went without.
There have been a wide variety of victory celebrations at Indy. But no one will soon forget Newgarden bounding from his car on the frontstretch and seamlessly slipping through an opening in the fence just above the wall ("I knew exactly were the gap was," he said later), then hopping a railing to throw himself into a mass of shocked but enthusiastic fans — all of them suddenly Josef Newgarden fans.
“Just pure emotion,” Newgarden said. “I was emotional the whole last 10 laps. I knew it wouldn’t be easy.
“I’ve always wanted to go into the crowd here in Indianapolis. I just thought it would be so cool to be part of that energy.”
He became part of the energy, and also part of history. Along with what his biggest-ever win does for his own portfolio, Newgarden produced the 19th Indy 500 victory for team owner Roger Penske. And the Captain’s 19th is his first since taking over ownership of the famed Speedway and the entire IndyCar Series three years ago.
As he gathered his 17th and 18th Indy wins at the end of the previous decade, he began talking about getting to 20. Since he’s showing no signs of letting off the gas at age 86, expect him to compete for No. 20 next May. In fact, count on it.
“We’re certainly not gonna stop here, I tell you,” he said Sunday.
But also expect him to talk with the series’ engineers in the coming days. Hopefully they’ll determine how that wheel broke free of its tether and nearly changed the entire story of this year’s Indy 500.
“I’m sure the guys at IndyCar will look at it and see what happened,” Penske said. “It’s been a long time since we had a wheel come off. We were very fortunate we didn’t have a bad accident.”
They had a bad one, actually. But they dodged disaster.
— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Indianapolis 500: Josef Newgarden wins, red flags fly, disaster dodged
