Insider: Josef Newgarden doesn't want to be IndyCar's superhero or black hat. But he is.
Nathan BrownINDIANAPOLIS – The moments after the checkered flag fluttered in the waning sunlight Sunday evening felt almost like a replay. Josef Newgarden sped through his Victory Lap, parked his red and yellow No. 2 Chevy on the Yard of Bricks and burst through a small hole in the fencing he’d pinpointed a decade ago as his entry into a raucous celebration with the people who make the Team Penske driver’s Indianapolis 500 experiences so special.
But if you watched closely, there were hints this was not the 33-year-old’s first. His crew was there to greet him. His route through the boisterous crowd and brief entry into the grandstands was more seamless. And he took a moment or two more to sit among his emotions – helmet on, perched on the edge of the outer wall – before fully, publicly coming to terms with the immensity of his achievement.
“I need a second,” he belted into the ears of chief mechanic Chad Gordon, who’d slunk through the fence and waded into the crowd to fetch his two-time 500-winning driver. For nearly 20 seconds, Newgarden’s wife, Ashley, stood behind her husband as he sat almost motionless on his seat etched into the barrier that separated him from the ecstasy of this grand achievement and what comes next.
Finally, Ashley put her hands on her husband’s shoulders and asked plainly, “Hey Josef, are you okay?”
Josef, still with his back to her, didn’t rush to answer, but Gordon replied with a wide grin, “He’s fine, he’s just exhausted.”
With NBC’s Marty Snider waiting patiently with his camera crew, Newgarden gathered his thoughts, his helmet now traded in for a red Firestone winner’s cap, and somehow folded his muscular frame back through the fence. But before he addressed the world as one of 21 men to have won the Greatest Spectacle in Racing multiple times, Newgarden pivoted to face the sea of colors in the crowd one more time.
He gripped the fence with both hands, rattling it like a caged lion, and then stepped down to face the music as one of the 500’s most passionate, but perhaps also its most reluctant, champion.
The spoils – the ring, the limited-edition TAG Heuer watch, another top-of-the-line Chevy Corvette pace car for the Newgarden garage and whatever portion of the $4.288 million winner’s purse is his – are nice, but they come with a price.
For one more year, Newgarden – a self-described extreme introvert – will be the IndyCar and IMS frontman. And this time it comes after many of his competitors remain publicly and privately fed up with his and Team Penske’s explanation for the program’s push-to-pass scandal.
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In what felt like a truly rare, honest, unfiltered Josef Newgarden soundbite, IndyCar’s first back-to-back 500 winner in more than 20 years offered a raw response to those who have – and continue – to question his integrity.
“They can say whatever they want at this point,” Newgarden said to NBC’s Snider. “I don’t care anymore.”
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During Newgarden's nearly 30-minute press conference the Friday morning of IndyCar’s Barber Motorsports Park weekend, roughly 48 hours from being stripped of his season-opening win at St. Pete for his role in the team’s scandal that involved illegal use of IndyCar’s overtake system, Newgarden bared his soul and told “his truth” in front of a room full of reporters, cameras, recorders and a paddock trying to separate fact from fiction. As he himself recognized how outrageous his story was, he opened the door for his detractors to call him every name in the book – well, all except one.
“You guys can call me every name in the book. You can call me incompetent, call me an idiot, call me an (expletive), call me stupid, whatever you want to call me,” Newgarden said then, fighting back tears. “But I’m not a liar.”
He convinced few.
From Colton Herta and Scott Dixon to Michael Andretti and Tony Kanaan, virtually every corner of the paddock has been unwilling to accept the stories of Newgarden, team president Tim Cindric and others. In the wake of the controversy, Newgarden fought against the widely held public perception that he’d further closed himself off from the field, with Graham Rahal claiming during bullpen interviews on Day 1 of 500 practice that Newgarden hadn’t spoken to a single one of his competitors in three weeks.
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“That’s what Graham told you? Well, I’ll leave it at Graham’s word,” Newgarden said sarcastically on May 14, as Rahal stood 20 feet behind him at IMS. “I’ll say this, I haven’t talked to Graham, but there’s a lot of guys here. How many? 34? He’s one guy I haven’t talked to. I can confirm that.”
Hours after his win Sunday, Newgarden claimed he was “grateful for the experience” of the scandal and called it “illuminating.”
“I know what I take from this, personally. I know what it showed me, which I’m thankful for,” he said. “I think it shows you things that maybe weren’t fully clear, but are very clear now.”
When asked Monday by IndyStar to elaborate, Newgarden plainly said he was “disappointed” to see how many of his competitors lashed out over a story that both feels somewhat over, but with so many questions unanswered.
“It was definitely disappointing to see a lot of the exterior. You see the worst in humanity, which is unfortunately in a lot of us. We’re all humans, and you see the worst part of people – often when you’re not asking to see it,” he told IndyStar. “It’s sorta tough to be faced with it, but within that is a learning experience.
“We’re all human at the end of the day, so how can things like that not affect you? Especially if you look at it. It’s true, it can affect anybody, regardless of what you say, and the perception of it was just on another level, compared to what reality is. I don’t know how you can’t wrestle with that, and certainly I did.”
A passionate winner, but a reluctant champion
Newgarden’s internal battles, though, have only begun. Now seemingly rid of the burden of public perception, the sport’s newest back-to-back 500 winner strides – or perhaps is shoved – back into the spotlight for a whirlwind week that a year ago utterly drained him. Various national media hits and a trip to the top of the Empire State Building on Tuesday make way for opening the NASDAQ Wednesday morning and throwing out the first pitch for Mets-Dodgers in the afternoon.
In his press conference Sunday night, Newgarden said he recognized the necessity for the whirlwind media tour but also noted he was going to try and be “more measured” and steal back more “personal time” to recharge his batteries.
Sitting down with IndyStar on Monday, Newgarden was more direct in stating his plans to try and personally negotiate away some of his media commitments, despite having just taken home the 500’s largest purse and done something – going back-to-back – that only five others have.
It’s all part of the Newgarden package: the fiery, almost spiteful celebration and the exuberance, and the wish to immediately shrink back into the series’ background.
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“I liken it to building a house. You don’t know how to until you build one, and once you do, you’re like, ‘Oh, now I know how to do this. We should build another one,’” Newgarden said Monday. “(After winning the 500 last year) I feel a little more prepared to say, ‘OK, we have to do this. This is the commitment, but how do we carve out and build the schedule a little differently to survive and make sure the championship is still in focus?’
“I’m really not built for it, but it comes with the job, and if you like driving race cars at this level and in this series, you’ve got to take everything that comes with it. It’s not the part that I like, but it’s okay because I care about IMS and the Indy 500 and the series’ health.”
The introspection is mildly ironic, but perhaps all the more interesting, in that Newgarden and his Ken doll-like looks, body-builder physique and boyish laid-back demeanor years ago seemed to be the perfect fit for a poster boy in the making. Three seasons no better than 13th in points turned into three wins in two years as a dark horse title contender. At 25 he joined Team Penske, which had just won the 2016 championship with the team’s most recent newcomer, Simon Pagenaud.
Newgarden wasted no time. With nine podiums and four wins, the 2017 championship was his. In the years that followed, including a second title in 2019 and three consecutive runner-up finishes, the Team Penske driver seemed from the outside a perfect foil to Scott Dixon’s legendary career. Newgarden built a first decade in the sport seemingly on-track to break some of the sport’s most hallowed records.
But to Newgarden – the driver who not long ago opined that a 10-win season, something not seen in more than 50 years, could be in the cards – his ‘good’ is never good enough. Bettering his top-level performances and producing them more consistently are the simple tasks that drive him – not boosting his public persona; ironic, coming from the understood star of Seasons 1 and 2 of ‘100 Days to Indy.’
“It’s just not me. I love the competition. I’m a diehard competitor, and I want to compete to the ‘nth’ degree. That’s what I live for. That’s what makes my heartbeat, but everything else around it is not why I show up,” said Newgarden, who said he wished he could skip his speech at Monday night’s Victory Celebration. “I show up for the people around me, and I love seeing the joy and the commitment from every individual on my team, but I’d much prefer we could send team members to go do all this stuff.
“It’s my job to speak at times, so I’ve got to learn how to do it. I try to excel at everything I do, but it doesn’t mean I enjoy it.”
Unsurprisingly, Newgarden says he shudders at the idea of being positioned as the face of IndyCar, arguing that the sport on the rise “needs more than one person” out front.
“For a lot of years, everyone has been looking for this one individual to carry the sport and that we have to have a superstar, but I still don’t subscribe to that,” he continued. “I think it takes a lot of individuals to make the sport great, and it’s more than one storyline. You need a lot of different angles, and I think we have that.”
Newgarden was then asked, ‘If you’re so uncomfortable with being positioned as IndyCar’s savior and superstar, would you say you almost feel more comfortable wearing the black hat as the villain some have portrayed you as?’
As most humans might react, Newgarden initially bristled. Very, very few, after all, aim to be Darth Vader rather than Luke Skywalker. And yet, the driver set to carry IndyCar’s torch for the next 12 months, like it or not, said he’s simply going to be himself and let others paint the narrative.
“I’m not trying to wear the black hat, but if people look at me and see one, then I can’t change that. I can’t change the way they think and feel, and quite frankly, it’s none of my business,” Newgarden said. “I’m just going to keep trying to do what I think is the right thing. Sometimes, that’s subjective, and I’ve got to go with what feels right, and that’s different for some people, but I try to do the right things at all times.
“One thing I think I’ve learned is there are a lot of people – and this is common in sports – where if you have too much success, and I put all of Team Penske in this category, people want to see you fail. I think that just comes with the territory. If people want to see us fail because we win too much, I’ll happily accept that position.”