Mother nature set up a wild 40-lap shootout at World Wide Technology Raceway, which ended with Newgarden in victory lane for the fourth time at the track. This was his third consecutive victory at Gateway, but it was nearly stolen from him on the final lap of the race.
Newgarden and his teammate Scott McLaughlin were battling for the lead with about 50 laps remaining, when rain began to fall. The race was red-flagged for rain with 43 laps remaining, with McLaughlin ahead. The two drivers pitted just before the rain arrived, but Newgarden got caught behind traffic coming to pit road, which ultimately cost him the lead. He was not about to let it cost him a race win.
Saturday’s race began in daylight, but ended under the lights after a delay of 2 hours and 9 minutes. The finish was well worth the wait as two drivers, in particular, put on an incredible show.
Newgarden wasted no time once the race resumed and took the lead with 36 laps to go and never looked back. The two-time series champion has been dominant on the ovals this season, outside of Indianapolis. He won three of the four races, but it would have been four-for-four had it not been for the shock failure at Iowa that took him out of the race while leading.
“I was so happy we could finish this race,” Newgarden said. “Scott McLaughlin, he wanted to win, too. I love that about us. We have a good relationship. He drove me super fair there at the end.”
“Scott drove me super-fair at the end there and we had a good fight,” Newgarden said. “It’s a big night for everybody at Team Penske. We just had to have a good restart. I knew Scott was going to be good and he had a good car, so I just tried to work the high lane. Got to give him credit, he easily could have won tonight.”
While Newgarden had firm control of this race in the closing laps, he was fortunate that this race was only 260 laps in length. David Malukas was on the hunt, and was on Newgarden’s rear wing as they crossed the finish line. It was a career-best finish for the rookie, who likely needed just another lap or two to get his first victory. The final margin of victory was just 0.470 seconds.
“Two laps to go, that was the lap I decided to do the outside lane, and it worked so well,” Malukas said after his runner-up finish. “We ended up getting around O’Ward and got around a lapped car, and then I saw the cars in front and they were two Penskes, and I was like, Oh my God, it’s two Penskes! I might have…
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