Despite not testing last month, the Team Penske trio plus Arrow McLaren Racing’s Pato O’Ward took 4 of the top 5 finishing positions in Saturday’s Hy-Vee Homefront 250 at the Iowa Speedway. Does that mean Sunday’s Hy-Vee One Step 250 (2 p.m. ET, NBC, INDYCAR Radio Network) is already over? Has this become a four-horse race for supremacy in the 12th race of the 2023 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season?

Josef Newgarden–Scott McLaughlin–Pato O-Ward being 1-2-3 on Saturday is none too shocking. They’re the tops in the series on ovals right now already.

Newgarden himself, 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.

 “I don’t really feel differently about it than any other track, to be honest,” said Newgarden. “My goal is to be strong everywhere. It doesn’t matter the discipline or the track type. I want to be good everywhere we show up. If there’s a place we’re not good, it’s number one on my list to figure out. Why aren’t we good here? Why can’t we win this race?

“Anything is possible for us and our team, and we need to approach it that way. So just in short, it doesn’t feel different to me, whether it’s Iowa or it’s Toronto or it’s Detroit or Road America. They all matter. You take great pride in being able to work with the team and put a victory together. They’re all difficult.

“It’s not easy to win a race in this series, so they all feel the same.”

In saying that, with those stats, Newgarden does say that he feels the pressure each time he comes to Iowa now.

“There’s a pressure that’s on us, I know when we show up here,” he says. “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.”

Newgarden rolls off 7th on Sunday. That’s the same spot that O’Ward won the second race of the doubleheader in a year ago. It’s a race that Newgarden led 148 laps in but crashed while leading on Lap 235.

He was hoping to become just the 3rd driver in 17 tries to sweep a race weekend in Indy Car. Now, he’ll give it another go in an 18th try on Sunday.

“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.”

If he’s going to be topped, look no further than teammate Scott McLaughlin to do so. McLaughlin was second in practice on Friday. He qualified second for both races on Saturday. He’d then finish runner-up to Newgarden in the race.

Newgarden singles out McLaughlin as one of his main challengers. That’s because he’s taught him all his secrets.

“I know Scotty (McLaughlin) is going to be good. Yeah, hopefully he is not too good, but he could be very good this weekend I could see,” he said on Friday.

Newgarden says that McLaughlin has had the luxury of seeing all the data into what makes the 32-year-old driver so strong here.

“Yeah, there’s no hiding when he is your teammate. I’ve gone a step further than that and just opened up my playbook for him,” he continued.

“He is smart. He is probably going to utilize that pretty well. He already looks like he is. So let’s see if I still have enough for him.”

McLaughlin admitted as much in saying that he’s studied and relied on what Newgarden has done here in order for himself to be stout as well.

“I give credit to Josef (Newgarden),” McLaughlin said. “We were on a plane home from Tahoe after doing a sponsor thing. I asked him, I watched every lap of his race and every lap of mine. He was very open what I could do better, where I could get air, whatever. He doesn’t have to do that. I think that’s the camaraderie I think we’ve got on the team.

“I’m sure there’s things he hasn’t told me. At the end of the day he opened up a lot, and I learned a lot. Like I said, I’ve been studying this a lot.”

Newgarden outlasted McLaughlin by 3.3755-seconds on Saturday. Does he now regret sharing that information with him?

“I mean, I knew he knew everything,” Newgarden said after scoring his 4th win in the last 6 races here. “I tried to be as transparent as I can with him as a teammate. He’s been — he’s a great member of the team. He’s a good pal. I want to kick his ass as much as anybody. It’s got nothing to do with that, and I’m not giving him any favors necessarily. I just think it’s the right thing to do.

“If your teammate wants to learn something, I hope he would give me the courtesy the same way. When he’s got something on me, I want him to teach me it. I think that’s how it should be. You don’t always get that, but I’m happy to teach him what I know.

“I look at it that it doesn’t really matter — if he knows exactly what I know, then it’s just going to come down to who’s doing a better job. If he does a better job than me, then he deserves to win. I hope he doesn’t do a better job than me tomorrow, but if he does, he’ll be a deserving winner. Let’s see what happens. He looked really good today. I’m going to probably have to step up a little bit more tomorrow.”

Now that McLaughlin has had 250 laps of racing on Saturday, more data to pour over as well as having a front row seat to witness what Newgarden was doing, watch out.

McLaughlin held Newgarden off for the first 93 laps before Newgarden got by for second on Lap 94. McLaughlin would then get by Will Power on Lap 143 and ride in tow to Newgarden the rest of the way to score his second top five finish of the season.

Can he get one spot better now on Sunday?

“I’m going to get him at some point. I’m very determined,” said McLaughlin. “Helluva race. I think the three of us could have easily swept the top three there. Pato did an awesome job. Their cars are just really good through traffic.”

McLaughlin has 13 top 5 finishes so far and among his 13 top 5 finishes in the sport, 6 of which came on ovals. He was second in Texas 1 in 2021 and fourth in Gateway that season. Last year, he was second at Texas, third in Iowa 2 and third again in Gateway. This year, he was sixth at Texas and now runner-up at Iowa.

However, if you’re following trends, pole sitter Will Power won’t win here. He’s won 8 Iowa poles and is 0-for-7 in his previous tries on winning from the top starting spots. But, only one driver has ever won from the pole here in the 17 times that it’s happened.

But, Power has a full races’ worth of data too on Saturday and clearly has a fast race car to know what to do better on Sunday.

Can he hold his teammates off?

Power made mention this past week that if Newgarden wasn’t among the field, then he’d likely have at least a win or two by now at the Iowa Speedway. Power instead, is 0-for-16 heading into Sundays race at the .894-mile short track tucked into the side of the I-80 cornfields.

“Heading back to Iowa. Yeah, yeah, yeah, one of my favorite tracks. Been trying to win there for years. There’s one guy that seems to prevent it. Yeah, it’s going to be fun,” said Power earlier this week.

Power’s last four Iowa finishes are second, third, second and fifth respectively. The Aussie also has 6 top sixes in his last 8 Iowa starts in general. 

Power and McLaughlin share the front row but factoring in Newgarden, they have 3 of the top 7 starting spots. Between them are David Malukas (winless), Ed Carpenter (winless in his last 50 starts), Colton Herta (0 top 5 finishes here) and Graham Rahal (winless in his last 102 starts).

Think they put much of a fight up?

It could easily be 1-2-3 Penske by time we reach the end of the first stint.

But, don’t sleep on O’Ward either.

O’Ward has been great in Gateway (3rd, 2nd, 2nd, 4th) and even better here: 4th, 12th, 2nd, 1st and 3rd. In his last 15 oval starts in general, he’s finished 6th, 3rd, 2nd, 3rd, 1st, 4th, 2nd, 15th, 2nd, 2nd, 1st, 4th, 2nd, 24th (crashed while battling for 2nd) and 3rd respectively.

“Solid podium for us today,” he said. “Just didn’t have anything for the Penskes. We need to take a solid step forward if we want to make them sweat tomorrow.

“I just think they were specifically strong getting through traffic. I would just — I’d get stuck. I wasn’t able to place the car where I needed to in order to get by some slow cars.

“Obviously happy with it, but considering how much pace we had last year, it’s like where is it?”

Among O’Ward’s 4 career wins, 3 have come in the second leg of a doubleheader weekend. He won the second race at Texas in 2021, the second race at Detroit also in 2021 and the second race here last year.

Can he do it again on Sunday?

“I have a very clear picture of what we need,” said O’Ward. “We’ve just got to get creative and see how we’re going to find that. Obviously we put our best foot forward coming into qualifying for the race, knowing what we’ve had here in the past, and we think this is going to be working for us.

“But we need to take another step if we want to challenge for the win tomorrow.”

The last time the 11th starting spot won here was in 2018 when James Hinchcliffe won from that spot in this same No. 5 car…

So, who can beat them?

Chip Ganassi Racing may be the only other ones. They’ll start 9-10-12-13.

Scott Dixon is 0-for-18 here.

Palou started seventh and finished eighth. While it’s not spectacular, it’s great for him to come away with his second top 10 finish in five tries here. He was 11th, 14th, 6th and 13th previously. Even at a similar track in Gateway, he’s finished 15th, 12th, 20th and 9th.

So, for him to be 8th on Saturday is a win for him.

Sato has one top five finish here.

It may be Ericsson. He started 10th and finished 5th on Saturday. He starts 10th again.

Since Gateway in 2021, Ericsson has finished 9th (Gateway), 3rd (Texas), 1st (Indianapolis), 8th and 6th (Iowa last year), 7th (Gateway again), 8th (Texas), 2nd (Indianapolis) and now 5th (Iowa). That’s nine straight top 10 finishes on them.

He’s close.

It’s just that Ganassi won 2 of the 1st 3 years but 0-for-15 since.

Chevy has swept the podium on Saturday, swept the podium on both days at Iowa last year and took 4 of the 5 spots on the lead lap on Saturday last year and had 4 cars in the top 5 this year. They also went with a 1-2-3 sweep on Sunday taking 8 wins in the last 10 Iowa starts.

At World Wide Technology Raceway, they’ve won 5 of the 7 races since the return including 3 straight.