JOSEF NEWGARDEN No. 2 HITACHI CHEVROLET
START: 6TH
FINISH: 8TH
POINTS: 1ST
RACE RUNDOWN: Josef Newgarden and the No. 2 Hitachi Chevrolet team were able to advance to Sunday’s main event of the Thermal $1 Million Challenge weekend where hard racing resulted in contact with the No. 7 Chevrolet of Alexander Rossi that relegated him to an eighth-place finish. Along with his two Team Penske teammates, Newgarden was placed in the first heat race in which he qualified sixth in Saturday’s time trials. A third-place finish in the heat put the reigning Indianapolis 500 champion sixth on the grid for the finale. A conversative approach to tire wear over the first 10 laps of the 20-lap feature placed Newgarden solidly in the fifth position at the halfway break before the second 10 laps. Unfortunately, he and Rossi made benign contact on Lap 11 the resulted on lost track position that Newgarden could not make up before the checkered flag.
NEWGARDEN’S THOUGHTS: “Just really hard racing there with me and Alex (Rossi) and kind of a microcosm of the two strategies you saw today. We didn’t quite go into the heavy tire conservation mode that he and others did over the first 10 laps before the break. You could tell it benefited him greatly and while the Hitachi Chevy was good today, I was just trying to hold him off. It was a great weekend here at Thermal. They rolled out the red carpet once again, and I think you saw today that this track could put on an entertaining show with more laps, tire degradation and pit strategies.”
TIL NEXT TIME, I AM STILL WORKING ON MY REDNECK!
