LEBANON — Josef Newgarden paced around his team’s pit box at Nashville Superspeedway late Sunday afternoon, his face as red as the race suit he wore and the No. 2 car he drove.
The smell of burning rubber that hovered over the start-finish line — spoils of Music City Grand Prix winner Colton Herta — crept closer, a cruel reminder of Newgarden’s afternoon.
Of his week. Of his season.
The Hendersonville native wondered as he wandered.
Wondered what could have been after he led 54 laps on this day but finished third in his first go-round at the 1.33-mile oval track. Wondered what could have been in a season he’d sooner forget.
“Did you see that?” he said as he walked toward a member of his pit crew.
A string of expletives followed. He kicked a tire.
A driver who lives in the Nashville area had won the race. His name wasn’t Josef Newgarden.
The final stop on the 2024 IndyCar calendar concluded a season that in no uncertain terms was the most challenging of Newgarden’s 13 in the series.
“By far,” he told The Tennessean while standing outside his infield trailer after the race.
NTT IndyCar Series driver Josef Newgarden heads to his car before qualification for the Music City Grand Prix at Nashville Superspeedway in Lebanon, Tenn., Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024.
A race week that began with a trip to the doctor Monday because Newgarden felt vertigo-like conditions ended like this.
“Hard not to be pissed,” he said. “Seems fitting for this year, the way this one shaped up for us.
“I’m going to be happy to leave all this in 2024.”
It started with a win and a DQ
The end of Newgarden’s season began in the beginning.
His victory in the season-opener March 10 at the Streets of St. Petersburg was erased 45 days later — along with the 54 points attached to it — after IndyCar disqualified him for manipulating his push-to-pass boost system, which has a button that allows drivers a brief increase in acceleration.
He never fully recovered from the points hit he took and ended the season eighth in the final standings, his worst showing since he finished 13th in 2014.
Newgarden, a two-time series champion, rebounded to win his second consecutive Indianapolis 500 in late May.
But more controversy and chaos was to come.
Newgarden’s second win of the season drew the ire of many drivers — and a middle finger from his teammate, Will Power — after he didn’t appear to accelerate properly during a restart near the end of the Worldwide Technology Raceway in Madison, Illinois, on Aug. 17.
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A wreck that involved Power followed.
Accusations of brake-checking and driving too slowly in the designated but unmarked zone during the restart flew fast and furious. Newgarden said the move wasn’t intentional. He said he was attempting to give himself the best chance to keep the lead.
As a result, IndyCar added signs on the outside catch wall fence in addition to painting lines on the track showing the end of the restart zone.
“I think it’s a great change,” Newgarden told The Tennessean last week. “It probably should have been there all along. They really didn’t change anything from a rule or procedure standpoint, but now we’re going to paint a line so nobody’s confused.
“It’s been a very hot topic for us, restarts.”
‘It’s been a long year’
After Sunday’s race, Newgarden sat behind a table, arms folded and eyes focused on a TV hanging on a wall to his left in the media center at Nashville Superspeedway.
He had entered the day in the standings in the same place he finished. His shot at his third season championship was long since gone.
He was, as they say, playing for pride.
He was watching Alex Palou celebrate his third overall title in Victory Lane. He could hear the hooting and hollering through the wall behind him, where it was taking place.
He could feel it.
“Gonna be a tough pill to swallow, but we’re going to have to swallow it,” he said of the race.
He could have been talking about his season.
Josef Newgarden, gathers with his crew before racing in the Music City Grand Prix Nashville Superspeedway in Lebanon, Tenn., Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024.
Back outside, next to his trailer, the look of frustration he’d been wearing leaned into disappointment.
“Probably a little bit of bleed over on the whole year,” he said of his emotions. “It’s tough not to execute a win with a winning car. It’s just that last restart (that cost us). We made a choice and it didn’t fall our way.”
There’s still a lot of work to do, a lot of assessing, Newgarden said.
The racing is over for now — some of the best news he has heard in quite some time.
“It’s been a long year,” Newgarden said.
Paul Skrbina is a sports enterprise reporter covering the Predators, Titans, Nashville SC, local colleges and local sports for The Tennessean. Reach him at pskrbina@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @paulskrbina. Follow his work here.
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Music City Grand Prix a microcosm of Josef Newgarden’s IndyCar season
