Josef Newgarden did exactly what he had to do this weekend at Iowa. Not winning the pole for either race kept him from max points. So he did next best with 106 points accumulated by sweeping both races and leading the most laps in the process.

He’d chop 46 points off his deficit to Alex Palou leaving Iowa with an 80 point gap heading to his home race in Nashville in two weeks.

“Yeah, I mean, I would take it,” Newgarden said on if he’d take this weekend if told before Friday that he’d cut that much of a deficit off. “I don’t know about you, but that’s a positive result I think leaving the weekend.

“I would have liked it to reach 50 or 60. That sound better, but that’s not where we’re at, and I think we did a pretty good job given what was in our control this weekend.

“I mean, it’s hard not to give kudos to Alex. I think he just did a great job. Clearly we seem to have the upper hand this weekend, and he had a great day today. You know, he maximized what he could, and I think that speaks to what he brings to his program. He maximizes his results. He minimized a loss today. You know, it could have be more, and he just made sure it wasn’t.

“He is a tremendous competitor. Did a great job. I wish we gained more, but I’m not going to be dissatisfied with where we brought it to.”

Newgarden feels the pressure when he comes to the Iowa Speedway. That’s a given as he inherited that pressure by being bar-none the best oval driver in the series right now.

“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.”

With coming into the weekend needing at least 1 win, he delivered in a sweep.

With that said, I wondered after his win on Saturday if he’d be able to make another end of season run at a championship.

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.”

He did just that. He led 212 of 250 laps a day after leading 129 of 250 to take home his fourth win of the season. Can he make up that gap with five races remaining?

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.

Weekend’s like this can make it happen.

“I think that’s the unknown,” Newgarden said over the final 5 races now. “We have been a little bit too up and down across the board. We’ve talked about this before.

“It’s just, yeah, I don’t think we have the consistency that we want as a team. When you look at every track type, we’re probably bouncing up and down a little bit too much.

“There’s no doubt that the ovals, particularly the race package has been very strong for us. It’s hard to complain about our race cars on ovals these days. They’re very, very good.

“It’s a complex schedule on the way out. We’ve got to do street course, road course, oval, back to two road courses, and yeah, it is a question mark. We definitely have to elevate our game on where we’ve been the first half of the year. There’s no doubt.

“I think that Alex and his crew, they’re in a really good spot. They’ve had what appears to be a pretty consistent program. We’ve got to elevate to their level and just execute.

“You just never know what’s going to happen. I think if we can be excellent on the back half of the schedule, then anything is possible.”

However, Palou isn’t going to make it easy. He finished 8th on Saturday and while running between 12th-13th for much of Sunday’s race, he’d come back over the final half to not only get into the top 10, then he made it to the top five and on the final restart, went from 5th to finishing 3rd.

His gap really maintained more than anything.

The gap from first to second is 80 for which it may say Palou lost 37 points on second and even more on Newgarden, he’ll consider this a massive win.

54 is max points in a race. Palou can skip Nashville and still have at least a 26-point lead over the final 4 events.

“I expected Josef to win because, the last races that he finished on an oval, not including Indy 500 this year, yeah, but the past, he has won,” said Palou.

“So we were counting on that, and it was up to us to try and minimize the damage. So, yeah, 100% didn’t expect to be on the podium today. Yeah, I’m happy to be here.”

Sunday just continues his dominance as he’s not finished worse than 8th in his last 13 races. He’s finished 1st, 4th, 1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd, 8th, 3rd since the Month of May.

Good luck catching him. Even on days that he’s qualified 15th, 7th, 12th in the last 3 races, he’s finished on the podium in 2 of the 3 tries.

Next up is Nashville to where he finished 3rd at last season. On street courses in 2023, he’s finished 8th (St. Pete), 5th (Long Beach), 1st (Detroit) and 2nd (Toronto). Then it’s back to Indy on the road course to where he won by nearly 20 seconds the last time out.

2 of the final 3 races are in Portland and Laguna Seca to where he won Portland in 2021 and won Laguna Seca by a half-minute last season.

So even if World Wide Technology Raceway is a rough weekend, he has enough of an advantage to overcome it too.

Which puts more pressure on Newgarden to deliver another win at Gateway next month, but even if he wins out, Palou just seems to be right there watching.

“I hope that before getting to Gateway, it’s not as bad as Iowa in the past, but it’s not been great,” said Palou. “I think I feel a bit more comfortable there, and also we have a bit more performance from the car.

“I need to do the work in Nashville and Indy Road Course before getting there. If we cannot because it’s part of the sport in INDYCAR, and then we’ll have to figure out.

“I’m glad we have those points in the bag, but I’m not comfortable, honestly. I will be comfortable if we won the championship already. We know in INDYCAR with the big swing you can make in only one weekend just by winning and having a bad race, yeah, you can never give up.”

Newgarden is coming along. He’s had four top two finishes and 5 top 5 finishes over the last 7 races. It’s just Palou has been that much better.

For the Indy 500, it was Newgarden 1st and Palou 4th. For Detroit it was Palou 1st and Newgarden 10th. In Road America, it was Palou 1st again and Newgarden 2nd. Toronto was Palou 2nd and Newgarden 5th. Iowa was Newgarden 1st and Palou 8th followed by Newgarden 1st and Palou 3rd.

It’s just that 17th place finish in St. Pete when Newgarden’s engine ran hot at the end. It was ninth in Long Beach with a badly timed caution while running in the top two which forced him to save fuel in the end dropping him from a top 5 to 9th. It was 15th in Barber when he had damage.

That’s why he’s facing more wins ahead.