By Luis Torres, Staff Writer
July is the busiest month for the NTT IndyCar Series with five races being at four different tracks, beginning this weekend at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
No question the separation of contenders and pretenders is set to unravel as the top-seven drivers are separated by 75 points.
The championship trail is still at stake, but Josef Newgarden currently has a leg up over the rest of the competition. More so that he enters Mid-Ohio as the defending race winner, but also the most recent series winner.
After leading 26 laps at Road America, Newgarden scored his third win of the season, remaining as the only repeat winner this season.
Additionally, he completed the million-dollar PeopleReady Force for Good Challenge as his victories have occurred on an oval (Texas), street (Long Beach) and road course (Road America).
No question, Newgarden is at a different zip code, but there’s a catch. Newgarden currently sits third in points, behind his teammate Will Power and Indy 500 champ Marcus Ericsson.
Since 2006, the INDYCAR title have been decided in the finale, requiring consistency going forward.
“It’s been a little bit too up and down for us. Kind of feast or famine. I think we genuinely had the potential for four or five wins up to this point. So we’ve done three of the potential five, let’s say. The other ones that we weren’t winning, we were finishing too far back,” Newgarden explained.
“We’ve got to up our consistency. It’s a little abnormal for us. I feel like we’re a fairly consistent group. So I’m not going to lose sleep on why that was happening. Sometimes you get in these little micro trends where we didn’t have the consistency we needed.
“Number one, we need to clean that up. We need to win a couple more races before the year is out because of the way the first part of the season went. We definitely have wins on the board. But definitely more than wins, consistency is going to rule the day this year, for sure.”
With nine rounds remaining, Ericsson leads Power by 27 points. Despite being in a strong position of going for his first Astor Cup, he noted the second half will be excruciating.
“It’s going to be tough all the way. It’s so competitive in the series at the moment. Any given weekend can be a new winner. It’s hard to be even in the top 10 if you don’t get everything right,” said Ericsson at Road America.
“I think it’s going…
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