While chasing down Scott Dixon in Sunday’s (April 21) Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, Josef Newgarden figured he only had to worry about the six-time IndyCar Series champion.
However, the defending Indianapolis 500 winner instead had to deal with a late challenge from Colton Herta. The pair had contact in the hairpin causing Newgarden’s car to have a momentary power loss exiting the corner with eight laps to go
The No. 26 Andretti Global Honda moved up to second while the No. 2 Team Penske Chevrolet fell to fourth. Try as they might, neither driver improved their positions as Dixon pulled off his 57th victory of his IndyCar career.
As for Newgarden, there was a lot of angry feelings after the 85-lap race around the 11-turn, 1.968-mile street circuit. The Tennessee native was catching Dixon, who was on an alternate fuel strategy after making a pit stop under an early full-course yellow. By staying out, Newgarden ran long for his two pit stops and stopped for the final time on Lap 58, seven laps after Dixon’s final stop.
With fresher tires and no need to save fuel, Newgarden began to close the gap to Dixon. From 5.3 seconds on Lap 62, the two-time IndyCar champion was within a second of Dixon after seven laps of running. Dixon strategically used his push-to-pass boost to maintain a small lead over Newgarden as Herta and Alex Palou gradually began to close up to the leading pair.
As Newgarden went through the hairpin to finish Lap 77, Herta’s nose bumped the rear of Newgarden’s car. The contact caused Newgarden’s car to briefly stall, compromising his drive out of the corner giving Herta an opportunity to get second place.
Both drivers saw the accident from conflicting perspectives. Newgarden wanted race control to assess an avoidable contact penalty to Herta while Herta was adamant that the contact wasn’t his fault.
“He just stopped in the middle of the corner,” Herta said over the radio to the pits.
“I mean I don’t know, it seemed pretty obvious [Herta] misjudged it and ran into me,” Newgarden said on pit road after the race. “Once I got lifted I went into anti-stall, I got lifted up off the ground a foot or two and I couldn’t get going. You have to wait for the clutch to disengage and get the thing reset so I was kind of stalled there for a second.”
Herta was a bit more reflective after the race.
“I think [Newgarden] set up pretty wide and was cutting back in so he was a…
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