Josef Newgarden interview: Looking toward the IndyCar championship

Josef Newgarden is in position to win his first IndyCar championship, and the Team Penske standout spoke to FanSided about his title contention.

Josef Newgarden is in the driver’s seat for the IndyCar championship. The newest addition to Team Penske is tied for the most wins by a driver so far in the 2017 IndyCar season, and grinding out a runner-up finish at Pocono on Sunday kept him ahead in the title points.

Yet if you’ve been following Newgarden, you’re not that surprised. The Tennessee native won multiple races when he drove for a much smaller team in Ed Carpenter Racing and was up for the title there, too. His move to Team Penske has just thrown gasoline on the fire of his success.

FanSided spoke to Newgarden ahead of the ABC Supply 500 to talk about what it’s like for him to be leading the league, and the possibility that he’s less than a month away from being crowned the next IndyCar champion.

When he signed up with Penske, IndyCar’s most powerhouse team, did he expect that would be the move that would take him the extra step toward victory?

“I hoped I would be in a championship position. How could you not?” Newgarden told us. “When joining Team Penske, I think you hope you’re going to just dominate. Everyone would love to do that. I think in any situation that you’re in in IndyCar, you would hope to be able to do that. That would be the best-case scenario.”

But he didn’t take that as a certainty. In fact, it was anything but.

“I didn’t know how the championship was going to unfold. I knew that we were going to have work in front of us. I knew we would need time to gel,” he continued, adding, “I still think we are. I’m a believer in that you have to build up kind of a book for the year and that you have to understand for each specific team what you’re doing for each track.

“I had that book already written up on everywhere we went for [his previous team] ECR and I understood everything that we were doing and why we were doing it, and at Penske we don’t have that. They have their notebook, but I don’t have a personal one with them.

“I feel like we’re still gelling, we’re still learning, so I’m a little bit surprised at how quickly we’ve hit the ground running,” he concluded. “There’s also been moments where we could have been better and I could have been better and maybe as a team we could have been better, and I think with experience that will come.”

The idea of an even better Josef Newgarden is a little bit frightening considering the results that he’s put up during the 2017 IndyCar season. His toughest competition is four-time champion Scott Dixon, followed by all three of his own teammates: Helio Castroneves, Will Power and Simon Pagenaud.

Fans and commentators have wondered aloud if the fact that they’re all gunning for the same individual goal has changed the team dynamic, but Newgarden told us that’s not the case.

“I haven’t really noticed much difference,” he reflected. “I think we all want to be the best within the team, but it’s very clear [in] the way that we work that we work together. We try and help the whole group be better, and if it’s not me winning a race or winning the championship, then we focus on trying to get at least one of the Penske cars to do that.

“You always hope it’s you. You want to be the best within the team. But at the end of the day, we’ve got to have one of the Team Penske cars succeeding, and that’s what we all work for.

“So it hasn’t changed, and we have an open book. We all try and help each other as much as possible, kind of ebbs and flows a little bit. Sometimes it helps me more, and sometimes what I’m doing helps the other guys more. So I think it goes back and forth, and you certainly get your fair share of help throughout the year.”

He expects that the battle for the IndyCar championship will remain a close one and says his approach to race weekends hasn’t changed now that he’s in the front of the field, though he’s enjoying being there rather than chasing someone else’s lead.

“I don’t know why you ever wouldn’t want to be the leader,” Newgarden explained. “If you can be in a position where you’re leading the championship, I always think it’s better than having a deficit because to me, I don’t really approach a race weekend different if I’m leading or if I’m trying to catch up.

“I think for us it’ll be hard to hold on to it because everyone is so close. You have one little mistake or one little mess-up in the next race and it’s very easy to slip back. So we’ve just got to try and stay out front if we can, and the more that we can build a points gap, that only helps … We need to just stay at least in touch with the lead as much as possible and make sure that we have a shot at winning the championship on our own terms when we go to [the season finale at] Sonoma.”

Should he manage to win the 2017 IndyCar title, Josef Newgarden would be the first American-born IndyCar champion since Ryan Hunter-Reay in 2012. Much has been made of growing American talent in the international world of IndyCar, yet Newgarden doesn’t put too much stock in that part of his potential accomplishment.

“I’ve always loved about IndyCar that we have some of the best talent from around the world,” he reflected, “whether that’s from the driving side or the team side with all our engineers, mechanics, ownership. I love that diversity and think that that’s what makes IndyCar so great, is we have the best of the best from around the world.

“I never put too much stock into my nationality with it, but there was always a little bit of pride, I guess, in being American in a predominantly North American championship, and I think maybe driving for Team Penske certainly makes that a little bit more special. Again, overall, I don’t think about it too much, but I think it’s a little bit more special this year being a part of Team Penske and everything they’ve done with American talent here in the IndyCar Series.”

No matter where he’s from or who he’s driving for, it’s clear that Josef Newgarden is one of the most talented drivers in the Verizon IndyCar Series, and we may soon be calling him champion.

Next: Updated Verizon IndyCar Series standings after Pocono

The Verizon IndyCar Series returns to Gateway Motorsports Park this Saturday, Aug. 26. For the latest IndyCar news throughout the rest of the 2017 IndyCar season, be sure to follow along with the Motor Sports category at FanSided here.