Alex Palou finished right where he was hoping for on mild Central Iowa Saturday afternoon and that’s right in the top 10 at one of his worst tracks. He brought his No. 10 Dallara-Honda home in eighth in fact. For a driver with a top eight finish in literally all 11 races run this season, he’s going to be a hard one to top over the last six races.

However, if anyone is going to catch him, it may very well be Josef Newgarden.

He’s done it before.

In a six-race span to end the 2020 season, Newgarden nearly erased that 117 gap by having five top four finishes — four of those in the top two. Scott Dixon only had one podium and two top fives to narrowly hold off the hard charging Newgarden.

He missed out on the championship by only 16 points. While he was hopeful of having this year’s title wrapped up by time we get to Laguna Seca, those aspirations are long gone. He just needs to make it to the season finale with title hopes still intact.

Days like Saturday will ensure that happens.

Newgarden made up 28 points on Palou on Saturday scoring 53 of 54 available points in his dominating win on the .894 mile track. He went from 126 down to 98.

“I’m very aware of it. I’ve seen it climb from the beginning of the season,” said Newgarden. “Alex (Palou) has had a great run. He’s really had no bad races. I explained this in the past that, when you’re a great driver like Alex and he’s got a great team around him and you don’t have any bad races, that is what happens points-wise. You build up a cushion the way they have.

“It’s a tough deficit that we’re in. I’m aware of it. I’m not putting any pressure on this weekend or to the end of the year. It kind of is what it is, right? I can’t control what happens with Alex. I think the odds are higher that he has some bad luck at some point, but that doesn’t mean it’s ever going to come. It just may be a great year for those guys where they don’t ever truly see it, and that’s okay.

“I’ve just had to learn over the years that you can’t control these things. You really can’t. I focus on trying to be the best that we can be every weekend. This weekend’s no different. It’s just you’re dealing with that scenario that you brought up that everyone expects us to be really good here and win a couple of races. I know that.

“Regardless of that, I just try to make sure we do the best job. We did the best job we could today, and we need to do that tomorrow.”

Newgarden starts 7th on Sunday. He’ll try to become just the 3rd driver to sweep a weekend. The other two occurred in 2013 (Scott Dixon at Toronto) and 2017 (Graham Rahal at Belle Isle).

“It’s definitely in the window, there’s no doubt,” Newgarden said on if he can win again on Sunday. “The tough thing about Iowa is the window is so tight here. You can have a stint where you’re really good and a stint where you all of a sudden lose a ton of potential and time on the average, and it’s really easy to bounce back and forth between perfect and way off perfect.

“I think the car’s in the window. We’ve just got to maybe clean some areas up. I’ve got to get some new tools in my toolkit, figure out how can I arm myself a little bit better for the way everything is flowing nowadays?

“Everyone is stronger. It looks like that. Everyone has more maneuverability. Everyone is getting coached by their spotters now on exactly how to race people hard. So it is a tougher game than I think it’s ever been around here.

“Our car is capable. We’ve just got to make sure we maximize it.”

Newgarden said after being quickest in practice on Friday that he was hesitant to say that he’s the favorite, but now, he knows what this team and this car is capable of.

“I was hesitant yesterday to — I feel like everybody — when we walk in here, they just assume, oh, we’re going to be quick,” he said. “It’s not the attitude that you can have. You just can’t feel like there’s anything given. I think we did a good job today recovering. I was really proud of the team.

“To feel disappointed with qualifying and then to just really improve the race car and do a great job today, I’m proud of that, but that doesn’t guarantee tomorrow either. I think Scott’s going to be really good. Pato, he’s going to come back better. I think Will’s going to be strong. You never know who else is going to improve overnight.

“I’m focused on being better tomorrow because I’m going to assume that everyone else is going to pick up their game.”

Newgarden is THE short oval king. He’s won 5 races here, 4-for-7 at World Wide Technology Raceway and also has a 2018 win at Phoenix as well. That’s 10 of his 28 wins (35.7%) on short ovals.

In fact, each of his last 5 race wins have come on ovals as has 7 of his last 9 wins (77.7%) in general. 14 of his 28 wins (50%) were on ovals.

Newgarden’s led 111 or more laps in 8 of his last 10 Iowa starts including five wins, a pair of runner-ups, a fourth, fifth and sixth place result in the last 10 tries.

Another win would cut off another chunk of his deficit too.

“That’s a great chunk,” he said after erasing so many points on Saturday. “You win another time, what does that put you at, I don’t know, 72? That would be great. That would be great. We’re going to for sure need that.

“You can’t spin this any way. I’m not telling myself a story to make myself feel better tomorrow. There’s no doubt we have to win a lot of races, and Alex has to inevitably at some point hit bad luck. It’s just the way this whole thing goes. If that doesn’t happen, then we’re still going to focus on winning races, and hopefully we have a lot of wins on the year and we get close. Or maybe just winning a bunch of races and he doesn’t need the bad luck, and that’s enough to get us the championship.

“I have no idea how this is all going to play out, but yeah, tomorrow — they all matter at this point. What is there, six to go? They’re all going to be critical. We can’t afford a bad weekend anymore. He can, but we’ve got to be pretty much perfect, which when it’s like that, it just almost doesn’t matter. Like what’s going to be is going to be. I think a lot of people are in this mindset. They’re just trying to win races.

“It’s kind of a good way to go about it because you can’t just take little bites out of him. It’s just not going to work. You’ve got to be hitting it with a hammer and hoping that fate kind of swings back your way. So I hope we get that, but there’s just no telling if that’s going to happen.”

That’s a lot of pressure, but that’s expected out of this team when they come here.

“There’s a pressure that’s on us, I know when we show up here,” said Newgarden. “It’s that assumption. It’s the assumption that we’re going to be great just because we should be. We’re the 2 car. We should be really good here.

“That’s okay because I think there’s always a pressure that exists. You show up to Indianapolis with Team Penske, and there’s only — there’s only one place that people accept as okay for Team Penske, and that’s winning the race. We deal with those pressures. It’s not like it’s something new.

“But I think, more than anything, it’s just been — it’s honestly been a really tough year, like we’ve had some good moments, there’s no doubt. Obviously the 500 was just — it was the best moment for everybody this year. Other than that, it’s been a really tough season, really, really tough. It just feels like one of those grinders again. We grinded last year.

“I want to figure out how to get us in a place where we’re not grinding and try to figure it out week to week. I’ve got all the confidence in the world. The tough thing for me is I know the potential of the team, I really do. It’s there. It’s always been there, and I just want us to realize it more.

“We’re continually working on that. For me, I’m just a perfectionist, and I think working towards that potential and maximizing it is what you’re seeing from me.”

After a tough start to the year, Newgarden now has 3 top 5 finishes in the last four races and 5 top 10’s over the last 7.

Palou was brought back down to earth on Saturday with his first finish outside the top two since a fourth place finish in May’s Indy 500. That snaps a four race streak. But, for a bad day to be eighth, Newgarden knows that he has to win in bunches and with Iowa being a prime opportunity for another race on Sunday, he must maximize it.