INDIANAPOLIS — For Josef Newgarden, Sunday’s victory in the 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500 was a long time coming. It was one that almost seemed like it would never come. As the years clocked by, another winless Month of May would ensue.

For the next American hero, the one thing missing was an Indy 500 win.

“I’ll be honest, it’s annoying,” Newgarden said of showing up every year and answering questions about not winning this race. “It’s been terrible. It is mentally draining to be here for three weeks and just to know that you really only have one opportunity, and it comes down to today, and that’s the day you’ve got to be perfect and great and everything has got to work out.

“So you spend all this time and effort, and it’s really just a mental grind to work through that. The more you’ve been here, the more it’s not worked out, the more that grind really starts to gnaw at you.

“I don’t necessarily subscribe to the fact that if you don’t win the 500 your career is a failure, but I think a lot of people really view this race and this championship with that lens, that the 500 stands alone, and that if you’re not able to capture one, then the career really is a failure in a lot of ways.

“It’s impossible to not recognize that or to absorb that from people when you’re here, and I just didn’t know if circumstance would ever work out where it would really come to be where we could win the race.

“I just said — especially after ’19, where I did have an opportunity to win the race and we fell short, I said, if I’m ever in a position again to win this race, I’m not coming back with a top-5 result. I just don’t care what happens. You come here to win the race, and we’re going to do that.”

Two series championships and 26 wins. The only thing missing to keeping Newgarden from becoming that next breakout mainstream star was Indy success.

In 12 prior starts, he had just three top five finishes. None of which were truly ones to where he was a legitimate threat to win.

However, being a Team Penske driver, eventually it was going to come, right?

He was eighth in 2018, fourth in 2019 and fifth in 2020.

The problem is, after Will Power won in 2018 and Simon Pagenaud in 2019, Penske’s Indy success faltered. They had been passed up by not only Ed Carpenter Racing here, but Arrow McLaren Racing too.

Newgarden finished 12th from a 21st starting spot in 2021. He was only 13th after starting 14th last year. It wasn’t just him that was off. So were his teammates.

Power started 22nd and finished 14th in 2020, started 32nd and finished 30th in 2021 and 11th to 15th last year. Two total laps led.

Scott McLaughlin’s two starts saw him qualify 17th and 26th and finish 20th and 29th. Zero laps led. .

When Pagenaud was with the team in 2020 and 2021, he qualified 25th and 26th respectively and finished 22nd and third. 17 total laps led.

Coming into this year though. This was supposed to be different. No more failures here. Roger Penske got the keys to this place in 2020 and they’ve led 19 laps since. This could stay that way another year, right?

After a decent week of practice last week, qualifying went awry.

Power qualified 12th. McLaughlin was in 14th and Newgarden 17th. Nothing appeared to be changing. With all four McLaren’s up front and Rinus VeeKay scoring his fourth straight top four starting spot, Penske’s looked to be slumping.

Heck, even AJ Foyt Racing had both cars starting in front of the three Penske’s on Sunday.

If Newgarden was ever going to win. This had to be the year. Sam Hanks and Tony Kanaan each won in their 12th Indy 500 starts. No one else has gone winless longer before taking a trip to victory lane.

Penske now though, I’d say has figured it out. It was a day that you could pass here if you had a good car. Penske’s said all along they had good race cars and boy did they ever. With great fuel mileage, Power and Newgarden were both in the top 10 after the initial stint. After the second stint, they were knocking on the door of a top five.

In the second half, there they were. Newgarden was in the top five and going to be a force from this point forward.

He was aggressive at the right times and gave Penske his 19th Indy 500 win but most importantly, his first. This is a massive win for INDYCAR. This is what they needed. They have been waiting for someone like Newgarden to win this race and now they got him.

“Obviously I’ve never had the honor of winning this race. I was in awe of sitting next to my boss Roger Penske and realizing this is his 19th. So it was very special,” says Newgarden.

“To win this race is indescribable. I think being at this event is indescribable. Someone has to come and see it and be a part of it to understand what it is really all about, and I’ve always wanted the honor to win this race because I wanted to go in the crowd if it was ever possible because I know what the energy is like here in Indianapolis.

“So to me, it was an unbelievable finish to be able to be here with the team and do that.

“I’m a little out of words. I apologize that I’m running out of steam here. It’s been a lot.”

Roger Penske said that he became a car owner there in the final two laps.

“I think Newgarden showed what he’s really made of today,” Penske said. “He was, I think, confident but yet cautious there at the end, and when it was time to go he made it happen. We can’t thank him enough from the team.”

Tim Cindric apologized that it took so long for this return to Indy glory, but he feels really good now that they’re back.

“Obviously he’s (Newgarden) shown throughout his career that he’s a championship-caliber driver, and he’s wanted this place so bad that it was kind of going to be checkers or wreckers there at the end. You kind of knew that,” he said.

Cindric said part of what kept Newgarden out of victory lane for the first 12 years of his career was circumstantial.

“I think some of it is circumstances. Some of it I think is developing a bit of a feel, because it’s different than any other place,” he says. “You see people that come here and run really well, and we go to these other ovals and you wonder, why not. It’s vice versa. You see people on the other ovals — I mean, and I don’t think he’s ever — I think we’ve had a shot to win it here a couple times and it hasn’t really chosen us for different reasons.

“It’s a track position game and it’s a bit of chess, and you see it no different than the Daytona 500 in some ways as far as how you position yourself at the end and what you have to — where you have to be throughout the race. It’s becoming closer to that.

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a stock car race. But I think you have to be in that — you saw where he restarted third and was able to take the lead, and you see where you’re the leader and you’ve got to figure out, okay, how to give up one position but not give up two positions, because it’s really not a question whether you’re going to give up one, it’s just how you position yourself to get back to the next stride.”

Newgarden calls this win gratifying for the entire team.

“There should be a tremendous amount of pride across the entire Team Penske group because we’ve had a tough go here the last three, four years, and we’ve had a lot of questions to answer every day,” he says.

“After every qualifying weekend we’ve got to come and put a brave face on and say that we just didn’t fully get there.

“I knew this year, similar to last year, but even better this year, that we had a good race car and a car that could win the race, and I wasn’t worried about where we qualified.

“Of course we wanted to be on the front row, and if possible qualify on the pole, but it’s very gratifying for all the work that’s been put in.

“I know firsthand how much effort has been poured into the last two, three years to figure out how we win this race again, and for our standard, we don’t show up here to be average. There’s nothing given; Indy doesn’t owe anybody anything. It doesn’t matter how many 500s you have. It doesn’t matter what team you are. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. It isn’t an easy place to succeed at.

“I don’t think we came with an ego, and to work through the difficulty the last three, four years, this victory is a win for all of us on our team, and it’s very gratifying for every member that’s put the time in.

“I think this feels more relieving. There’s no doubt that this was a bigger weight (compared to a championship).

“I think I’m still in the camp that the championship is tougher. In a lot of ways it is, because there’s so much more that goes into it.

“This is the single-most difficult race in the world to win. I’ll stand by that. There’s no doubt. If you’re looking at a single event, you cannot beat the difficulty of the Indy 500.

“But I don’t know how you compare the two. You’re looking at one standalone versus a championship, and putting a championship together, I think, is very, very difficult. You really see the best rise to the top. You see the best team, the best pit stop performance, consistently it adds up over a year, and it’s very difficult to do that.

“They felt very different. I just don’t know that — I classify them as different things. I think internally I feel differently about them.

“I think about all the drivers that probably should have won this race that never won it, and it doesn’t make a difference whether they won it or not. Their career is still fantastic. It’s more just a shame that it didn’t work out for them.

“That’s really how I feel about the event. I’m not here to take anything away from it, but I don’t like looping it into the category that you have to have it to be complete. I don’t feel differently as a driver because today happened, I just feel less weight.

“There’s no denying that Indianapolis, this is the most difficult motor race in the world to win. It’s the pressure that builds this entire month. You have so much time to potentially get it right, and it comes down to really one day to be perfect.

“You can have a good qualifying. You can have a good Fast Friday. You can have good Carb Day. If you’re not good on Race Day, it’s all for nothing.

“That’s what makes Indy so terribly pressure filled but terribly difficult, too.

“I think that’s what has made it special today to win it. I just feel overjoyed for the amount of work we put in this month.

“On the flipside, when you don’t win it, that’s what makes it so demoralizing. You pack up, you say we, lived here for three weeks’ and we put everything we had into this and it didn’t work out. It just breaks your heart. It’s broken my heart every year.

“And so I feel — I just feel amazing now that it didn’t break my heart this year.”

Next up now for Penske is turning that parking spot Number from 19 to 20.

“We’re certainly not going to stop here, I can tell you, with the team we have and the depth of our drivers,” he says.

“The competition, though, everybody here today knows it’s never been tighter. You could see all during the race, maybe within four or five seconds you had 20 cars, and that’s what we’re racing every day. We seen it when we qualify. I think 16 inches was the difference between 1 and 2 in qualifying.

“We’re going to be back next year. I think Newgarden, this is one he wanted to check off for years. He didn’t understand why he hadn’t won the race today. He earned it. He won the race today, which is certainly to his credit.”

Newgarden is the first American driver to win the Indianapolis 500 since Alexander Rossi in 2016 and a driver they can market to a larger audience.