By David Morgan, Associate Editor
MADISON, Ill. – Josef Newgarden took a major step forward in the NTT IndyCar Series championship chase on Saturday night, winning the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway to pull within three points of the lead.
Entering the day at a 22-point deficit to fellow Team Penske driver Will Power, Newgarden used a rain delay that stretched two hours and nine minutes to his advantage, passing another Penske teammate in Scott McLaughlin with 35 laps to go to score his third-straight and fourth career win at WWTR.
“It was a great night,” Newgarden said. “Very big night. You got to win these races when you’re in position to do it. I wanted to close that one out really badly, really badly.
“I was elated. Elated that we were able to get back going and I had the opportunity on the restart. I’m thankful to my teammate. I thought Scott drove me with a tremendous amount of respect. He raced me hard, he wasn’t giving me anything, but just gave me a lot of respect like you would expect from a teammate. I think he goes above and beyond sometimes.
“Big night for us, PPG, Team Chevy. Can’t talk enough about Team Chevy. Had the engine to beat tonight, no doubt. We had great fuel mileage, reliability, power, all the things we always want. A big night for everybody on Team Penske. Very good for us in the championship fight.”
Rookie David Malukas put on a show over the course of the final green flag run, charging all the way up to second-place with a number of daring moves to claim his career-best IndyCar finish. Finishing less than half a second behind Newgarden, Malukas looked to be a prime candidate to give him a run for his money if he would have had more laps to work with.
The 20-year-old explained that after some encouragement from his spotter to try the high line, he was really able to make up some ground on the leaders.
“Pancho said, Try going wide in one and two, three and four,” Malukas said. “One and two didn’t work. They sweeped it. It felt really good.
“I just said, ‘You know, two to go, let’s try it.’
“It worked very well. I had that bit of clean air on the front right wing, I was able to get a run. Because the track was so much quicker with it being so much later, I hit the limiter in sixth gear. I couldn’t get a tow or suck on him. We had to go two-wide in one and two. Scary going wide there. Definitely getting some…
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