Pato O’Ward just didn’t have enough to seriously contend with the Penske trio of Josef Newgarden, Scott McLaughlin and Will Power to win Saturday’s Hy-Vee Homefront 250. Power won both poles and led 119 of the first 121 laps at the Iowa Speedway on a sun filled Saturday afternoon.

McLaughlin would finish second while Newgarden would lead a race-high 129 of 250 laps in a dominating statement of a win.

Between them, that’s 248 of 250 laps led and finished of 1-2-5. O’Ward was 9.6072-seconds behind Newgarden at the finish while McLaughlin was also 6.3-seconds up the road too.

However, O’Ward was still next best in class to snag his 18th podium in his 66th career NTT INDYCAR SERIES start. Despite a third place run, he was still disappointed to be that far behind.

“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?”

O’Ward has been great on ovals with him having 13 top six finishes in his last 15 oval starts. In fact, 10 of his 18 career podiums have come on ovals. 3 of those 10 have occurred right here on this .894-mile track.

He’s finished 4th, 12th, 2nd, 1st and now 3rd here. At a like track in World Wide Technology Raceway, he’s fared even better with finishes of 3rd, 2nd, 2nd and 4th.

He has four straight top eight finishes on the season now too and six in the last eight races in general.

That gives him optimism for Sunday’s 250-lapper despite starting 11th.

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…