IndyCar: Josef Newgarden delighted as he closes gap in championship to three points

Josef Newgarden gave his hopes of winning a third IndyCar series title a huge boost on Saturday evening, as he won a rain-hit Bommarito Automotive Group 500.

Newgarden now sits just three points off of series leader Will Power, with just two races left to go in the championship, and so it looks as though the title fight this year is going to go right down to the wire.

It’s a track that’s been kind to Newgarden over the years, with him winning twice there prior to this weekend just gone, and with him making it five victories now for the season, no one in the field has as many wins to their name in terms of 2022.

As mentioned, rain threatened to scupper the race with a delay splitting the scheduled 260 laps into a 213-lap first stint before the final 47 laps were thrashed out after the weather had cleared up – by this point we were running under floodlights as well.

Newgarden mastered what was thrown at him, however, and was naturally pleased with the result:

“I was so happy we could finish this race,” Newgarden said. “Scott McLaughlin, he wanted to win, too. I love that about us. We have a good relationship. He drove me super fair there at the end.

“We just had to have a good start,” Newgarden said. “I knew Scott was going to be good at the end there, and he had a great restart. I just tried to work the high lane. The high lane worked earlier for me. We just had enough to get by him. He was no slouch this weekend.”

Up next is the Grand Prix of Portland on 4th September.