In case you’d missed, IndyCar driver Josef Newgarden ended up on his lid at Texas Motor Speedway just a few weeks ago in one absolutely nasty-looking crash. He escaped with a “only” broken clavicle and a broken hand, but the resilient young Ed Carpenter Racing driver was back in the car at Road America just a couple weeks later, finishing in the Top 10 with a heavily braced hand and pins holding his clavicle together. I only mention this because Newgarden turned up at Iowa Speedway, a physically demanding ⅞-mile oval, less than a month after his big crash and absolutely spanked the entire IndyCar field up and down the track for two solid hours in one of the most dominating races you will ever see.
Newgarden qualified the Carpenter Racing car on the outside of the front row and proceeded to absolutely mug Penske Racing driver and current championship leader Simon Pagenaud from pole. From there, Newgarden simply put on a clinic, broken hand and all, and never looked in any way like he was going to relinquish the lead. By the time of the first full-course caution, Newgarden had lapped the entire field except Pagenaud, who trailed at that time by 12 seconds in a place with 18-second laps. His pit crew executed perfectly and Newgarden responded on all restarts by just leaving the rest of the field looking forlornly at the rapidly vanishing green-and-golf Chevy. When the checkered flag flew, Newgarden had led an astonishing 282 of the 300 laps, which is something that just does not happen in IndyCar very often anymore.
Thanks to the restarts and wave-arounds, a few more drivers got back on the lead lap—Five cars finished on the lead lap—but Newgarden managed traffic so much better than anyone else and the underdog made the series’ biggest teams like Penske, Chip Ganassi Racing, and Andretti Autosport (who had won seven times in a row at Iowa coming into the weekend) looking like they were racing in a feeder series. And while he downplayed his injured hand, Newgarden’s astonishing performance while not at 100 percent healthy just might be the drive of the year.
You can watch the entire Iowa Corn 300 here on IndyCar’s YouTube channel:
