FORT WORTH, Texas — Wild racing, IndyCar Style, returned to Texas Motor Speedway Sunday as Josef Newgarden of Team Penske won the PPG 375 for the second-straight year.
IndyCar’s aerodynamic changes combined with a different Firestone Racing tire did the trick on the aging surface at the 1.54-mile, high-banked oval and the result was a thrilling battle between Newgarden, Pato O’Ward, Alex Palou, David Malukas and Scott Dixon at the end of the race.
Newgarden and O’Ward were locked in a side-by-side battle heading into the final laps, setting up to be a tense finish. But with two laps to go, Romain Grosjean of Andretti Autosport smacked the turn two wall, destroying the No. 28 DHL Honda. IndyCar officials had no choice but to hit the yellow light and the race ended under caution with Newgarden’s Chevrolet in front of O’Ward’s Chevy.
The race winner applauded a return to the style of racing where it was high-speed battling with additional lanes for the drivers to utilize.
“I think most people would look at today and say that’s how Texas should race,” Newgarden said. “You look at the past, it’s even been taken up a notch from that. Three-wide the entire time. I wouldn’t want to see that. I think you can go too far nowadays.
“I really like high tire deg. I like when people come and go, and you’ve got to work your advantage. You’ve really got to work to try to keep the car underneath you.
“We’re kind of a step above where I like to see the cars at. I know from an entertainment standpoint this had to be significantly better than last year. It just had to be. It felt packed up for most of the race and definitely at the end.”
Despite the fact it finished under yellow, it was high drama in a Sunday early afternoon showdown.
There were 26 lead changes among eight different drivers, but the class of the field included Newgarden and O’Ward. Combined, the two drivers led 214 of the 250 laps in the race.
Newgarden led the most at 123. O’Ward was next at 91.
The two drivers put on a tremendous battle at the end of the race.
“I had the timing right,” O’Ward said of his battle at the end. “The lap before we crossed the line, my nose was slightly in front of his. There was no way it was going to finish in single file.
“Yeah, the racing gods had other plans.”
That was Grosjean’s crash that ensured the race would not finish under green and for the second-straight race, O’Ward finished second after having a drive capable of victory.
“I have to say to the guys it’s been a hell of a start to the year,” O’Ward said. “I had a rocket. Like, I don’t think there’s another way to put it.”
Alex Palou was third in the No. 10 Honda for Chip Ganassi Racing. The 2021 NTT IndyCar Series champion led 22 laps. Second-year driver David Malukas was fourth in the No. 18 Honda for Dale Coyne Racing with five-time Texas Motor Speedway winner Scott Dixon rounding out the top five.
It was Dixon’s record-setting 194th top-five finish, breaking a tie with the legendary Mario Andretti.
“It was OK, it’s hard to tell how the car was because of all the cautions at the end,” Dixon said. “At the end, we should have pitted on the second-to-last instead of the last one.
“People were chaotic, too. Grosjean was all over the place.”
Grosjean was in the battle in the final third of the race, before he would eventually crash.
“It was definitely a lot closer racing,” Dixon said. “It would be nice if we could get the second lane more useful without all of the downforce.”
There were five cautions for 52 laps. The most serious was on lap 223 when Devlin DeFrancesco scraped the wall, was trying to get off the track and Graham Rahal’s Honda slammed into his left wheel. Rahal’s car launched into the air and both cars ended up in the wall.
Neither driver was injured.
“I’m just upset to come out of here this way,” Rahal said. “Derek (Davidson, race strategist) had just finished on the radio saying, ‘Get out of here in one piece’ and that was the objective.
“Then you have a guy slide right up the track in front of you. There’s nothing I could do. I had a guy to my inside. What do I do?
“So, I’m really frustrated.”
Newgarden left the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg frustrated after his car caught on fire and he finished 17th.
He drove to victory in the very next race Sunday at Texas and described his strategy at the end.
“We were getting beat pretty significantly in the middle of the race,” Newgarden said afterwards. “I thought beginning of the race we had him, like, super covered.
“I think Pato went the right way. He did the exact opposite of what I was doing. They were telling me what he was asking for. We were bad in the middle. He snuck back up on me. I had a big gap. He snuck up on me, was walking away.
“I was like we just need to get through this stint and catch back up. He had such a lead at that point, it was going to be difficult. The caution 100 percent brought us back into it. We got the car back to where it needed to be. When we were in position, we could get the job done.
“But we were not significantly better than him. I mean, he was just as good. He was definitely better in the middle. In the end he was just as good. It could have gone either way, in my opinion, between our cars.”
It was perhaps the best IndyCar oval race since the wild race at Fontana, California in 2015, but it was not a pack race. The additional downforce helped the cars run fast laps with an additional lane of racing and the drivers raved at the improvement.
Texas Motor Speedway has a rich and long history of exciting racing with the NTT IndyCar Series, but when the track put the infamous PJ1 sealant in 2019. When IndyCar arrived in 2020, the surface was slick and hazardous for the faster-speed racing machines.
It was single-file racing in 2020 and 2021. Last year, then-IndyCar driver and seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson proved teams could run a higher lane and once rubber worked its way into an upper groove, the racing was better.
But on Sunday, it was spectacular.
According to IndyCar, the PPG 375 had 482 passes for position. That was almost 200 more than last year and 300 more than the average at Texas Motor Speedway since 2018.
The 26 lead changes are the most at Texas since 2001, 26 races ago.
“Where we go from here? It’s hard to say,” Newgarden said. “Old Texas is hard to beat. The configuration was great. The track surface was better for us, we could run all three lanes. I’d like to see that back, then we can start peeling off downforce off the cars.
“If you go and try and find that again, we might not get it right.”