Josef Newgarden celebrates his win at the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama in April
Josef Newgarden knew almost immediately. He just didn’t know he knew.
It took a little time for him to understand what happened when, as a 13-year-old, he first strapped into a competitive go-kart and ran laps around one of the circuits at Indianapolis Motor Speedway at speeds of up to 50 mph.
“It’s not like a movie scene where you have rock music playing and I’m like kicking ass on the road course,” he says. “It wasn’t that type of atmosphere. It was more like, ‘Whoa, what the hell is going on?’
“I remember actually being overwhelmed by it. My initial impression was, like, this was a lot to take in.”
Eventually he processed all the sights. The sounds. The smell. Most importantly, the speed. And once he did, the picture became clear: He was a race car driver.
That was half a lifetime ago, but in some ways nothing has changed.
Newgarden has followed that vision vertically. He quickly rose through the North American open-wheel ranks to become — at 27 years old — a veteran in the Verizon IndyCar Series, where he has won at least one race each of the past three seasons, as well as the current one. That success also has allowed him to pursue that passion horizontally: His willingness to branch out and experience other forms of racing took him early this year to Norway, where he raced on ice. He’s often mentioned as someone who might one day compete in the European-based Formula One.
Much of Middle Tennessee’s racing story has been told in and around The Fairgrounds Speedway and the homespun heroes who developed there — guys like Darrell Waltrip and Sterling Marlin, country boys with thick accents who were the epitome of the classic stock car drivers and went on to fame and wealth driving in NASCAR. Newgarden went a different direction and has added a whole new chapter to the history of the local racing scene. He was raised in Hendersonville, but his diction belies any regional rearing as do his choices within the sport. He eschewed NASCAR in favor of IndyCar, where he competes with drivers from all over the world rather than a majority of good ol’ boys.
Over the next couple of weeks, Newgarden will be back in Indianapolis for all the practice sessions, qualifying, ancillary events and spectacle that culminate with the Indianapolis 500 on May 27. It will be the seventh time he has run The Great American Race. To date, his best finish was third (2016). Nonetheless, this year he will race with the No. 1 on his car, indicative of the fact that he is the reigning series champion, which makes him — in the eyes of many — the one to beat. He won the title in 2017, his first year as a member of Team Penske, which has produced a record 16 Indianapolis 500 champions.
“You really value having the ‘1’ on there and understanding what it means,” says Newgarden. “For me, it’s just about, ‘How are we going to win more?’ It definitely sinks in after the year, because you start working on the next year, and then you start realizing all the work that was put in to win a championship and everything that everyone put into it. Then it becomes, ‘How are we going to win another championship?’ In that respect, nothing really changes.”
Had he gone the stock-car route, he’d be competing on a circuit awash in patriotic imagery. But in IndyCar, Newgarden is a willing albeit nonplussed standard-bearer for America. He is just the second American-born champion in the 10 years since the former Indy Racing League and CART combined to form a single open-wheel entity based in Indianapolis (IndyCar), and as such, he has become the face of a wave of young American-born drivers currently on the rise.
With a victory on Memorial Day weekend, he would become the third American in five years to win the Indianapolis 500.
“I’ve never felt the pressure, because it doesn’t matter where you’re from,” Newgarden says. “You want to be good regardless, right? We’ve always had the best from around the world, which is great. So I’ve never minded.
“From a series standpoint, I think it’s good to have [high-profile American drivers]. The way I’ve always looked at it is if we don’t have the best guys from around the world, then it doesn’t mean as much. I’ve always been a fan of having international drivers that are at the top of their game.”
Newgarden is certainly at the top of his. Through this season’s first four races, he had two wins, led more laps than any other driver, had the best average finish (fourth) and was the points leader. Dating back to last season, he’s won five of the past 10 races.
Over the years, Newgarden has learned to speak the language of the engineers who help build and fine-tune the cars, which helps both he and the engineers get the most out of the machines. He easily interacts with the sponsors who are so important to the sport and is equally comfortable with the many media requirements that come with being a champion — and an American champion. He has enjoyed the spoils of his success and set himself up for a long career behind the wheel.
But he’s never forgotten that 13-year-old boy hanging onto his go-kart for dear life.
“It’s hard to think about where you’re going to be in a couple years, especially in racing, because it moves so fast,” Newgarden says. “But I would love to race for a long time. I would hope if I retire in racing, if I’m lucky enough to retire — some guys get pushed out — I would hope I’d still drive race cars.
“I would do it for fun. I got going pretty quick. I mean, I was pretty good at it pretty early. But the very early, initial running of it overwhelmed me. But I loved it. Once I started doing it, I did not want to do anything else. That was like the only thing I wanted to do.”
