Josef Newgarden nearly swept the race weekend at the Iowa Speedway a season ago. He led 208 laps in Race 1 and 148 on the second day. If not for a late race crash before his final pit stop, he was heading towards a sweep.
Now, Newgarden picked up where he left off here last July.
The Tennessee native put down an early lap of 176.428 mph in his No. 2 Dallara-Chevrolet to top the 28-car field in the 90-minute NTT INDYCAR SERIES practice session around the .894-mile oval on Friday.
This was an important practice session as it was the only one of the race weekend. As a result, we saw a busy track with over 2,700 laps being turned.
Santino Ferrucci brought out the second and final stoppage of practice when he got wide in Turn 2 with 10 minutes left in the session. Some drivers elected to put on some fresh tires and turned their quickest lap of the day when doing so.
Scott McLaughlin was one of them as he turned his best time in the end with circling the short track with a speed of 175.968 mph in his No. 3 Dallara-Chevrolet.
Marcus Ericsson was P3 at 175.877 mph in his No. 8 Dallara-Honda. Colton Herta (175.521 mph) and Pato O’Ward (175.470 mph) rounded out the top five in the practice.
Favorites Up Front
The usual heavy hitters were found up front with the last three Indy 500 winners being 1-3-6, the last two Texas winners being 1-2 and the last three Iowa race winners being 1-5.
Herta and Daly were 4th and 9th respectively and they feel like they’re on the cusp here. Daly won the pole in 2020 and qualified 3rd here in both races a year ago. Hunter-Reay, the driver who took over his car, won here three-time and was third back in June during the test. He was 8th in practice. Last week’s winner Christian Lundgaard was 7th to give us a well represented top 10 in practice.
Palou Opens The Door
Alex Palou qualified 15th last week. He rebounded to finish 2nd. Can he do so here? Palou was 15th quick on the speed chart on Friday. How will he qualifying a race on Saturday? Ganassi did have Marcus Ericsson in 3rd and Takuma Sato in 6th but Scott Dixon was also 10th too. Do they have anything for Penske or McLaren?
Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin went 1-2 for Penske. Pato O’Ward was 5th for McLaren. That’s 4 of the top 6 in points represented in the top 5 in the speed chart on Friday.
Penske, McLaren Still Fast Despite Not Testing
A lot of folks wondered if the door to victory lane could be open with 20 cars testing here last month and Team Penske and Arrow McLaren Racing not being represented among them.
“I feel all of these other teams will have closed the gap a bit because it is a doubleheader race,” Will Power said on Wednesday afternoon in the weekly INDYCAR media call. “If you’re going into off-season after last year, you would focus pretty hard on that because of the points available. Maybe Ganassi is a bit better, and we know McLaren is good there.
“I don’t think Andretti tested there. Oh, yes, they did. They did. Yeah, it could be pretty — it will be a pretty fierce race.”
Honda has won 9 of the 10 poles this season including eight straight. They’ve also won 7 of the 10 races too. However, they have one Iowa victory since 2016. That came back in 2018.
Last year, Chevy swept the podium on both days in taking 4 of the 5 spots on the lead lap on Saturday’s race last year and a 1-2-3 sweep a day later. They’ve won 7 of the last 8 races here.
From a Chevy’s standpoint, there’s no point of testing at a track that you’ve dominated at lately. Why not go somewhere else to learn a deficit instead?
They instead went to Road America to test.
“We would use that test day on a track that we really would struggle at,” admitted Power. “Unfortunately, we used one of our tests at Road America, and the tire was different, and it really didn’t work out, which happens sometimes.
“We have very good cars there, so we’re hoping that we turn up and have to make minor adjustments, slight tire changes, track degradation.
“Those guys, for sure, I would expect, have improved, which makes it — yes, it will be a tougher race. I think track position is pretty big there because it’s kind of like Texas. If you’re at the back, you’re sitting in very dirty air and tires deg a lot sooner. And guys up front, they don’t, so when they get to the back of the train, they can murder through traffic.
“Yeah, you know how INDYCAR is. What makes it difficult to win.”
Newgarden agreed and said it was a compromise between the camp to choose Road America to test at over Iowa.
“It’s just a compromise. We decided to go to Road America versus here, whereas other teams decided to do it the other way around; right? So it’s not that there’s a secret. We made a choice,” said Newgarden.
“We almost came here. It wasn’t like a clear-cut decision or that it was easy to go to Road America versus this place, but we thought that was an area where we had more opportunity to gain than at Iowa. That’s why we did it.
“We’re going to find out here in 48 hours if that was a good call or not.”
For the Honda teams at Iowa, Power feels like that test was a massive advantage for them. He says that one of their advantages is that this is a short weekend with one practice and for those teams that tested here, they can jump straight into a qualifying run since they already have a ton of data to work off of. With track position being so important at Iowa, you better start up front and with tires being limited being a doubleheader weekend, you only have so much you can do on Friday.
“Yes, you’ve got to try to balance qualifying versus getting race work done in that one practice we have,” he said. “Pretty important to roll off the truck in a good spot, which I can’t see why we wouldn’t.
“That’s the advantage of testing. You’re going to turn up and just go straight out of the box and do a quality run on a new set, whereas we’re going to waste a set of tires just getting up to speed. And you need your tires because you’re limited because you’ve got two races.
“Yeah, that’s — yeah, that’s the disadvantage of not testing, but I expect the car to be good out of the box.”
The only Honda teams not here was Dale Coyne Racing. The rest were here and spent a whole day learning. Was it enough to close the gap?
Friday’s practice showed maybe not so.
3 of the top 5 speeds belonged to those teams that didn’t test with Josef Newgarden (1st), Scott McLaughlin (2nd) and Pato O’Ward (5th).
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say. Good practice for sure, no doubt. It’s difficult to say what tomorrow and Sunday is going to bring,” Newgarden said.
“I think everybody looks really good. There’s a lot of cars that tested here. Pretty much the whole field tested outside of us in McLaren, and I think everybody looks like they’ve raised their game.
“Legitimately everyone looked like they were levelled up relative to last year. Practice is kind of difficult here just because you’ve got to be ten laps difference on tires makes a huge swing in performance. So it’s hard to assess where everybody is when you’re out there, and it’s hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison.
“Any car that I was up against just felt like they were better than what they were doing last year. It was certainly not as easy to kind of come through the field.
“I think Ryan will be good in that ECR car. He has been good here in the past, and he looks pretty sporty.
“I thought the Ganassi cars looked better than they’ve been. It looked like they were happy at the test, so I think they’ll be difficult. I know McLaren is really strong here.
“So it’s not going to be easy whether it’s qualifying or the race. I think it will be pretty tight up and down the grid. We’ll see what happens.
“I had a really clear run to start out for my Q1 in the beginning. The second two Q-sims I did were not clear. The last one I got a little bit closer to that ultimate time that I did, but yeah, I think either/or it’s going to be tough.
“There’s a lot of other cars out there that probably didn’t get clear Q-sims, and we didn’t maybe see their ultimate pace. I’ll be fascinated to see the morning.
“I think we should be in the mix. It just has this feeling like everyone is way closer than what they were last year. So I’m speaking more about the race, but both sessions I think it’s going to be really close.”
O’Ward agreed.
“Particularly I think we obviously were not here for the test, so they’ve obviously gotten stronger because they had a full day that we didn’t,” he said.
“Well, vice versa. We had a full road in Road America that they didn’t, so you just have to pick your fights and really go to where you think you’re lacking.
“But it’s just — it’s an odd place from day-to-day because, like I said, you can feel like you’re not very strong, and then tomorrow everybody is on the exact same laps on the exact same tires, and then you’re just cruising.
“Like, that happened to me last year. I was kind of, like, eh, and then as soon as everybody is on the same playing field, it was just, like, bye.
“It’s so hard to read. You really don’t know until you get that race one under your belt, and then you are, okay, I need this for race two.
“I think today was a little bit of that. You know, we got some long runs in, but I mean, 40 laps, we still need to go 20 more to finish this stint, and those last 20 laps are usually pretty sketch.”
The curious part was O’Ward’s Arrow McLaren teammates of Alexander Rossi (14th) and Felix Rosenqvist (26th) not being up towards the front. Was it because of lack of pace and O’Ward being just that good here?
O’Ward’s been great in Gateway (3rd, 2nd, 2nd, 4th) and even better here: 4th, 12th, 2nd, 1st. In his last 14 oval starts in general, he’s finished 6th, 3rd, 2nd, 3rd, 1st, 4th, 2nd, 15th, 2nd, 2nd, 1st, 4th, 2nd and 24th respectively. He has three straight top eight finishes on the season now too and five in the last seven races in general.
He says he’s not quite there yet in regards to being a contender and feels like they still have some work to do to get his car dialed in. That’s scary to the field in a sense that O’Ward was fastest in the longer run speed charts on 5 lap and 10 lap averages.
“I have no idea where we’re at, to be honest,” he said. “It’s just tough. Around here five laps difference on your tires versus somebody else’s tires, it’s really a world of difference. It’s super easy to kind of spook yourself and feel like you’re not as strong as what you actually are, or you can get a misread and think, I’m a hero, and then you’re not.
“I think tomorrow will be obviously an opportunity to learn more of what everybody has got to work for race two. Yeah, we don’t have more time to really work on the car, so it’s just kind of qualifying and then race that qualifying car.
“I think it will be a dead game just like it always is in 60-something laps per set. Really pretty tall order.”
O’Ward and Newgarden have combined to have won 7 of the last 8 oval races in general with Newgarden winning 6 of the last 8 all by himself. He’s 2-for-2 this season.
On short ovals in general, Newgarden and O’Ward have won five in-a-row dating back to Race 2 at World Wide Technology Raceway in 2020. They’ve also gone 1-2 in 5 of the last 12 oval races too.
Oddly enough, 3 of O’Ward’s 4 career trips to victory lane came on the 2nd day of a doubleheader weekend which makes him a strong favorite for Sunday.
Will anyone beat them this weekend or do they run away with this? How much does not showing up to June’s test cost them performance?
So far, it seems like not so much.
Great Boost For MSR/ECR
There’s no doubt that both Meyer Shank Racing and Ed Carpenter Racing are having a rough season. In fact, both teams have drivers racing for them this weekend that didn’t start with the team in St. Pete.
MSR sits 20-24 in points. ECR is 15-19.
However, both tested here in June and both look stout so far on Friday.
Before the final caution to where a lot of cars put on fresh tires, MSR had both cars in the top 10 of the speed charts. They’d finish 9th (Conor Daly) and 13th (Helio Castroneves) with Daly’s top speed being 174.003 mph and Castroneves’ 173.083 mph.
This is the site of Daly’s only pole (2020) and Castroneves’ last win (2017). Daly also qualified third in both races here last year too.
In saying that, MSR struggled here last year though.
Simon Pagenaud finished 23rd in both races after qualifying 21st and 16th respectively. Castroneves was 16th and 21st respectively after starting 25th and 24th himself.
Now, they have great pace.
Same for ECR.
Three-time Iowa race winner Ryan Hunter-Reay was eighth (174.204 mph) on the speed charts after being third in the test last month. Ed Carpenter was 11th for much of the session before finishing 16th. Rinus VeeKay was 21st.
They both dropped with other electing to go for fresh tires at the end.
“The practice results that you see are not indicative at all of who is fast in race trim because the practice results are based on a solo lap by themselves with no interference, no dirty air, and all that stuff,” said Hunter-Reay.
“What’s really going to pay this weekend is a car that is consistent over the long run that uses the Firestone tire in a balanced manner through the stint. We have no idea who that is yet.
“We do have a good idea based on history and based on who I ran around tonight. I think Josef and Pato were probably some of the best out there. That’s what’s most important.
“Really the practice session really doesn’t matter. Folks that know really what to look for, we’ll go back and look at average pace or average lap times over a stint of 20, 30 laps, and that will kind of tell a story.
“But, yeah, it wasn’t a bad day. I think we made some good changes. I’m cautiously optimistic on hopefully we can just make a consistent run to the first two stints. If we do that, I think we’ll be good.
“It was quite a bit different than the test, that’s for sure. Just started the session pretty loose and then just had to work on kind of getting that in check.
“I kind of made the decision let’s just bail on focusing on anything qualifying. Let’s just focus on the race car the whole time. It’s different phases of the tire through the life of the tire, and you kind of figure out what you can get away with and what you can’t. It’s tough.
“It’s amazing how much different this place is than it was back in my first run in 2012. Totally different race car, but it’s challenging.
“It’s tough to keep the tire under you. You have to be smart about it. It will be a tough one, but I think we made the right changes towards the end of the session in practice. We had a good direction at the end, which is important.
Session Filled With Long Runs
With Iowa being more about long run pace not short run, Friday’s practice was thrilling in a sense that you saw so many laps turned with so many varying agendas. In fact, there was a 20-30 mph difference between your opening lap speed on fresh tires and 60 or so lap pace on the same tires.
That led to some wild moments in practice and a lot of data accumulated.
Results
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