Newgarden Dethrones Pagenaud

The 2016 champion won the race, but couldn’t prevent his Penske team-mate taking the title.

- David Malsher

In a year when consistency was all, Josef New garden started slowly, made a couple of big mistakes along the way, but kept his head at what turned out to be the vital moments, became supremely aggressive at the crucial times, and won the 2017 IndyCar war.

He did not, however, win the season finale – that went to Team Penske Dallara-Chevrolet team-mate and outgoing champion Simon Pagenaud, who made a four-stop strategy work on a day when there were no full-course cautions. Pagenaud’s race, in fact, was a microcosm of New garden’s season – a couple of blunders but otherwise in possession of the pace to get the job done.

During qualifying, New garden made it clear that he had put the Watkins Glen disappointment – 18th after a pitlane gaffe – behind him. He used his fresh Chevrolet engine to perfection to edge team-mate Will Power for pole by a mere 0.035 seconds, with the other Penske machines of Pagenaud and Helio Castroneves locking out row two.New garden’s chief title rival, Scott Dixon, was four points behind and would line his Chip Ganassi Racing Dallara-Honda up sixth alongside Takuma Sato, who bounced back from a shunt in testing to be quickest of the Andretti Auto sport Honda cars on his final drive for the team.

Before the race, championship outsider Power lost several crew members to New garden, as the #12 crew had won the pitstop competition at Indy and have been – along with Dixon’s squad – the most consistently slick pitlane operators all year. Being fifth in the championship, Power was also under strict instruction not to race New garden at Sonoma – not until the menacing shadow of Dixon was out of the running for the title.