Why Newgarden's best IndyCar season yet wasn't enough

Following his sixth IndyCar title, Chip Ganassi Racing's Scott Dixon commented that he had initially been surprised by how rapidly the 2020 season had evolved into a two-horse race between himself and defending champion Josef Newgarden. Then, he said, came the realisation why this was so: his rival from Team Penske had emulated his own style of making sure bad days were as good as possible.

"That's what wins championships," Dixon told Autosport, "and I think that's the way Newgarden and that side of Penske has really altered the way that they race - which makes it tougher for us!

"It's all about turning the rubbish runs into top fives or even podiums, and the #1 team has become very good at that. They've learned what we learned - that top fives are pretty valuable..."

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While there remain a few slits in the armour of Newgarden and the #1 Team Penske crew, they're gradually being welded closed with each passing year. No doubt that Newgarden drove better in 2020 than in 2019, which in turn was better than his 2018 campaign. The flipside of this gratifying progress is that in spite of these personal gains, he failed to retain the championship - the brighter the light, the darker the shadows. That's got to be frustrating.

"It is, yeah, and you've basically summed up how I feel about our 2020," Newgarden tells Autosport. "It's that feeling that we did everything we could and it wasn't enough. And you're right, we didn't do a heck of a lot wrong this season."

He's not being immodest, just stating the facts. He's similarly frank when asked at which point he felt it all slipping away. No, it wasn't after Dixon won the first three rounds, but rather a couple of events later, immediately following the first Iowa race.

That night, Newgarden had been leading but a caution flag soon after he pitted left Newgarden a lap down, allowing Dixon among others to get a 'free' pitstop. The #1 Penske-Chevrolet charged hard thereafter, recovering to fifth, but three places ahead of him was his Ganassi rival. On stepping from the cockpit, this good-natured and ever-approachable Tennessean was as agitated as he's ever been seen in public. Clearly buzzing with energy but having nowhere to channel it, he looked like he'd need tethering to prevent him sticking his fist through a wall.

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He recalls: "Yeah, Iowa race one was when it sunk in that things were going against us, that Scott's lead was almost too difficult to overcome - already. He'd won the first three races of the season, and then that was... what... round five? And he'd got a second place where we were only fifth.

"I give Dixon and Ganassi credit because they were doing a good job, they were taking advantage of every situation that was negative for us. To have one single car doing that and for that car to be Dixon's... it's a recipe for disaster for us and everyone else!" Josef Newgarden

"Meanwhile we as a team had been unlucky in the season up to that point. The yellow in the Indy GP had caught out both Will [Power, team-mate] and I, so Dixon won. Then in Road America race one we were leading but we had a plenum fire during a pitstop... Not many people knew about that. They just assumed we or I had made a mistake, because as you'll recall there were a lot of pitlane errors going on between pitcrews and drivers early in the season.

"But no, this issue was just one of those very odd things that we've had maybe only once before. I wouldn't even put it on anyone; it's totally unpredictable, a weird oscillation in the engine. Anyway, that delay really dropped us down the order when we should have won, and then if we didn't, it should have been Will who won, but he had a pitcrew issue. Another win that we as a team just gave to Scott.

"So then we get to that first Iowa race and we're dominating and a yellow causes the field to flip, and we get buried in the pack, and suddenly Simon [Pagenaud] and Scott find themselves in front. You can't let someone like Scott keep finishing ahead of you and get that much of a run going in the championship.

"I give Dixon and Ganassi credit because they were doing a good job, they were taking advantage of every situation that was negative for us. To have one single car doing that and for that car to be Dixon's... it's a recipe for disaster for us and everyone else!

"So how you saw me after that first Iowa race was a result of me being pissed off at losing a race but also realising, 'OK, we're only five races into the season and we're already at the limit of what we can sustain and still have a hope of winning the championship'.

"We won the race the next night at Iowa but Scott limited the damage by getting a top five, then he beat us in the [Indianapolis] 500, and he won at Gateway race one, and that's when he was too far gone. He was 117 points ahead with just six races to go. You just can't overcome all that in the time available. Remember, this was a shortened season anyway and they'd removed the double-points from the finale."

Newgarden, in champion fashion, worked hard at it and reduced that deficit to just 16 points at year's end with an impressive run that included three more victories.

"This was the best year that I've put together," he comments, "and I'm always very analytical and self-critical and honest about myself as to what I've done well and what I've not done well. And truly, I don't think I put a wheel wrong.

"Of course, there were areas to improve - I dropped the ball personally in some qualifying sessions - but on racedays, I don't think I made errors.

"Equally, I don't think the Penske #1 team made missteps in pitstops or strategy. It was simply a case of bad timing in terms of caution periods, no one we can blame for that. I still think I have the best strategist on pitlane in Tim Cindric [Team Penske president] and I have the best pitcrew, as evidenced by our pitstops.

"It just didn't work out this year, and I'm afraid that is the nature of IndyCar - some years you have circumstances go for you and some years they go against you. The same was true at Indy..."

While only the stony-hearted could fail to sympathise with Dixon and the entire #9 CGR team for the manner in which they lost the Indy 500 to Takuma Sato despite leading 111 of the 200 laps, his runner-up finish that day did provide another crucial toe-hold in his ultimately successful climb to the championship summit. It was the only race this year that gave double points, and again he finished ahead of Newgarden, who was fifth.

This was one of those rare years when the Chevrolet engine was the less preferable option at the Speedway. The Chevy drivers didn't quite have the power of the Hondas at 1.5-bar turbo boost for qualifying, nor did they have the fuel mileage at 1.3-bar on race day. The best Chevys could match the best Hondas for power at the reduced boost level, but had to lean out their fuel mixture sooner into a stint. In hindsight, Newgarden, who briefly ran ahead of eventual winner Sato following their final stops, could have run without fuel worries and challenged for victory because the final five laps ran under caution for Spencer Pigot's crash, but such occurrences are impossible to predict.

Newgarden is well trained and won't say a word against Chevy, but anyone with eyes to see was well aware that a Bowtie victory at the Brickyard this year would have been against the run of play. What was particularly vexing for Newgarden was that for the first time in his four seasons at Penske, he was the squad's primary hope at Indy, qualifying 13th when his three team-mates started from the final third of the grid and eventually finished as the top Chevy runner.

"I know personally I have improvements to make - in qualifying, like I said, and maybe one or two other areas. And as a team we have to make some gains too, like at Texas" Josef Newgarden

There is some solace in that, he admits, but he found greater satisfaction in nailing a victory (Harvest GP race one) on the IMS road course - previously one of his weaker tracks. For 2021, he admits that he and race engineer Gavin Ward "need to find a new Iowa" since the short oval, previously Newgarden's domain, has fallen off the IndyCar schedule.

But if he didn't "put a wheel wrong" by his own analysis, doesn't that make it hard to make further gains?

"I understand what you're saying and to be honest, it is going to be interesting to see where we make most progress," he replies. "But like the cliche says, if you don't make progress, you aren't just standing still - you're going backward relative to the others. So we're always going to find areas to revisit, chip away at it.

"I know personally I have improvements to make - in qualifying, like I said, and maybe one or two other areas. And as a team we have to make some gains too, like at Texas. Ganassi was at a different level than us in race setup, and remember next year we have two races there.

"I think we have to look at the tyre situation too. One of the reasons we finally got that win on the Indy road course was because our car was just so solid on both of Firestone's compounds, where I think our main rivals were good on one and not so good on the other. Trying to get that consistency across reds and blacks for all road and street tracks would obviously be ideal because it would be good to widen that gap over Ganassi, who I think had more tyre struggles than we did this year."

One of the things that makes Newgarden fun to watch is that however much he's matured since he first reached IndyCar in 2012 with Sarah Fisher's small team, he retains a rookie-like indefatigable enthusiasm so that whenever he faces mid-race setbacks, he goes hard at it all over again.

"You have to, you just have to, if you want to stay in contention for the championship," he explains. "Like in the Indy GP this year, the yellow comes out and we fall to 15th or something, but we still drove our way up to seventh. And however disappointed you feel - 'Damn, we just lost a certain podium finish and we handed an easy win to our main rival' - you have to get everything you can out of the situation because you know that's exactly what that guy is going to do on another day when things have gone against him and swung our way.

"That's what you're up against every time you fight with Dixon and Ganassi. They're going to capitalise on your bad days, like they did this year, and make the most of their bad days, like they did this year. So you have to do the same.

"I race the same way every time. OK, yes, there's a little bit more flexibility in my approach if we're near the end of the year and we're leading the championship. But our overall approach is always to get the most from the day. If there's a possible win and it's going to take a slightly risky move to get it, I'm going to go for it. If I decide the risk's too great and that we could lose a lot more if it goes wrong than we could gain if it goes right, then I'm not going to take it.

"I think that's the judgment call that any decent racecar driver should constantly be making. I've gotten that wrong in the past because I lean more toward aggression than safety, for sure. That's just my style, where I don't ever want to settle. If I feel I've been in a winning situation and it's been ripped away from us, that's when I sometimes get myself into trouble. But I honestly don't feel like we did that this year."

That same competitive day-to-day mindset is something that Newgarden also applies to the big picture, the title battle. So when Dixon was well over 100 points ahead, Newgarden and Team Penske as a whole simply kept filling his mirrors in the metaphorical sense, kept up the pressure, went for broke. Between them, Newgarden and Power won five of the final six races.

That final stint in the finale at St. Petersburg was particularly satisfying to watch for Newgarden fans. After staving off a cold-tyre challenge from Pato O'Ward following a restart, the leader cut loose, set his fastest laps of the race and pulled away. It looked like an ace driver exulting in his art, despite knowing such efforts were futile in championship terms because Dixon was in the comfortable third he needed.

As he puts it, "I'm not trying to do something stupid but this is the last chance I get to rag the car around the track for a while".

"I also wanted fastest lap, because it was the only thing I could do to showcase what we'd been doing all year - running at or near the front and fighting," he says. "That's all we could do in the circumstances.

"Listen, I don't want to give the impression that Scott is just lucky. Heck, I'm sure there have been years where he's been on the other end of it, when he felt he should have won the championship and didn't. It's just that in 2020, I thought we were better more often than them, but they did their usual excellent and steady job and grabbed it whenever things didn't go our way.

"In those circumstances, all we can do is hold our heads high and say we did everything within our power. And next year we will continue to do that, but with some improvements, and hopefully that will be enough to get the job done."