Josef Newgarden won Saturday’s (Aug. 20) Bommarito Automotive Group 500 to secure his third consecutive and fourth overall win at World Wide Technology Raceway in the NTT IndyCar Series.
Behind Newgarden, rookie David Malukas pulled off a daring pass around Scott McLaughlin on the white flag lap and grabbed his career best finish in the process, coming home second.
Newgarden had nothing but praise for his third placed teammate in victory lane.
“I knew Scott was going to be good at the end there, and he had a great restart,” Newgarden told NBC.
“He was no slouch this weekend. He was very, very good and you know, Scott’s done an amazing job; he could’ve easily won this race himself … But I’m glad we were able to come back out on top.”
The race’s conclusion came over two hours behind schedule after rain red flagged the race on lap 217, eight laps after McLaughlin swiped control of the race from Newgarden. McLaughlin and his Penske teammates dominated the evening in St, Louis only being briefly challenged by Arrow McLaren SP’s Pato O’Ward – and eventually Malukas.
Newgarden took the lead once again as the race got back underway with 43 laps to go, and never relinquished control from that point on.
While Newgarden now moves into second place in the standings, only three points behind Will Power, Malukas may as well have won the race himself after nabbing second place in the race away from McLaughlin at the last moment.
RETWEET to congratulate @malukasdavid!
He passed Scott McLaughlin on the final lap to score a runner-up finish and his first podium in the NTT @INDYCAR SERIES. pic.twitter.com/1unNyuh2Hi
— INDYCAR on NBC (@IndyCaronNBC) August 21, 2022
Teammates Malukas and Takuma Sato both used fresh tires to mount a last ditch charge to the front, with Malukas making his way around Power, O’Ward, and Colton Herta en route to his attack on McLaughlin. Malukas’ previous best finish had come at Iowa, an eighth place result.
“Unfortunately, two laps to go, that’s the one lap I decided to do the outside lane and it worked so well,” Malukas reflected after the race.
“So, if I would have done that a bit sooner, maybe we could have done something for Newgarden. But, I mean overall that is a win for me, a win for the team. Man, they deserve that so much!”
Power led the first half of the race from a historic pole position until he was overtaken by O’Ward during a restart just beyond the halfway point of the race. The…
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