Josef Newgarden swept both races this past weekend at the Iowa Speedway. He was untouchable. With that said, here are my main thoughts from the 250 lap doubleheader. I didn’t include Newgarden and Palou’s point implications since I wrote about it here.

Nor did I discuss the end of race decisions by race control. I wrote about that here.

However, when I looked over my notebook, here’s what I have thoughts on.

• Newgarden Penske Perfect – He led 68.2% of the laps (341 of 500) this weekend and didn’t matter where he started from. From 3rd on Saturday to 7th on Sunday, he was fast and he was untouchable.
  • Newgarden is THE short oval king. He’s won 6 races here, 4-for-7 at World Wide Technology Raceway and also has a 2018 win at Phoenix as well. That’s 11 of his 29 wins (37.9%) on short ovals.
  • In fact, each of his last 6 race wins have come on ovals as has 8 of his last 10 wins (80%) in general. 14 of his 29 wins (48.2%) were on ovals.
  • Newgarden’s led 111 or more laps in 9 of his last 11 Iowa starts including six wins, a pair of runner-ups, a fourth, fifth and sixth place result in the last 12 tries.
  • Newgarden just picked up his 28th and 29th career NTT INDYCAR SERIES wins already with a weekend doubleheader sweep in Iowa. He’s joining rare company as he’s now tied with Rick Mears for 13th on the all-time wins list.
  • Newgarden has won 4 or more times in 5 of his 7 seasons with Team Penske. If he gets 4 wins in each of his next two seasons, he’d be tied with Bourdais in 2025. Another 4 wins gets him to Will Power’s current mark at 41.
  • See, time is in Newgarden’s favor. He’s only 32-years-old. He’s only 13 wins shy of Michael Andretti, 23 shy of Mario and 24 of Scott Dixon. If he averages 4 wins for each season for a decade that’s 40 more wins which could take him clear of AJ Foyt’s 67 mark.
  • He just passed Al Unser Jr. for 12th on the all-time lap leaders chart at 3,885.
  • He’s nearing the all-time Penske wins leader mark already. Will Power has 38, Helio Castroneves has 30. Rick Mears has 29. Newgarden has 26.
  • His 14 oval wins rank him third behind Mears (22) and Castroneves (17).
• Team Penske Short Track Aces – They swept the front row on both days and also went 1-2-5 in those races. In fact, Penske led 492 of 500 laps (98.4%) in leading 248 of 250 in Race 1 and 244 of 250 in Race 2.
• Will Power winless – He’s 0-for-17 at Iowa but also 0-for-8 while starting from the pole there too. That’s a remarkable feat for the 41 race victor in the series. Power’s last five Iowa finishes are second, third, second, fifth and second respectively. He also has 8 top sixes in his last 10 Iowa starts overall. On another short oval in Gateway, Power finished 3rd and 6th in his last 2 starts.
  • He made mention that Josef Newgarden is the only reason for him not to have won here yet. He was right. Among his 4 runner-up finishes on this track, 3 of which were to Newgarden. The other was Pato O’Ward. Still, among the last 3 back end to the doubleheader weekend here, Power was finished runner-up in each.
  • Still, he led 149 laps this weekend which moves him as the 7th driver ever to lead over 5,000 laps in the series.

• McLaren Missed Test – Yes, they had good reason to not test here, but they aren’t Team Penske…yet. Penske didn’t either and dominated. McLaren, looked a step off. They led two total laps during the weekend and while having the 3rd place finisher on Saturday and 4th on Sunday, they just looked a step off.
  • Pato O’Ward was 3rd and 10th himself but didn’t lead a single lap. He was so dominant on short ovals prior so that’s a stat worth noting.
  • Alexander Rossi was only 10th and 15th while Felix Rosenqvist was 13th and 4th.
  • If they had tested, I’d be curious if they could have given Penske a fight.
  • “Solid podium for us today,” O’Ward said on Saturday. “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?”
• Oval Masters Standing out – Newgarden’s stats are above, but he has other drivers that are next in class.
  • McLaughlin has 14 top 5 finishes so far and among his 14 top 5 finishes in the sport, 7 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 and 5th at Iowa.
  • O’Ward has been great in Gateway (3rd, 2nd, 2nd, 4th) and even better here: 4th, 12th, 2nd, 1st, 3rd and 10th. In his last 16 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), 3rd and 10th respectively.
  • Scott Dixon 0-for-19 at Iowa but has been solid here as of last with seven straight top six finishes. He has 3 top 8’s in his last four at Gateway too. On ovals in 2023, he’s finished 5th, 6th, 6th and 6th.
  • Will Power’s last five Iowa finishes are second, third, second, fifth and second respectively. Power has 8 top sixes in his last 10 Iowa starts. Somehow though, he’s winless in 15 Iowa tries as well. He finished 3rd and 6th in his last 2 Gateway starts.
  • Alex Palou now has 3 top 6 finishes in his last 4 Iowa starts and has accumulated the 2nd most points on ovals this season with finishes of 3rd, 4th, 8th and 3rd.
  • Marcus Ericsson has 10 straight top 10 finishes on ovals. 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 and 9th (Iowa).
• Ganassi next best in class – While Penske dominated, Ganassi toppled McLaren for next best. They led the only laps for Honda with each of the four drivers leading at least one lap. In fact, all but Marcus Ericsson (3 laps led) led just one singular lap. Still, they went 4-6-8-9 in Race 1 and 3-6-9-25 in Race 2. Ganassi won 2 of the 1st 3 years but 0-for-17 since.

• Chevy untouchable – Honda’s 4-for-4 on street courses, but Chevy is now 4-for-4 on ovals. They went 1-2-3-5 in Race 1 and 1-2-4-5 in Race 2. They led 248 of 250 laps in Race 1 and 246 of 250 in Race 2. They also swept the podium both days a year ago and took 4 of the 5 spots on the lead lap in Race 1 that year and 4 cars in the top 5 on Race 2.
  • They have 9 wins in the last 11 Iowa starts. At World Wide Technology Raceway, they’ve won 5 of the 7 races since the return including 3 straight.
• McLaughlin swinging for fence. He knows all of Josef Newgarden’s tricks. That’s why he had to do something different still under the Lap 158 caution. McLaughlin had the second-best car as he ran in that spot for much of Sunday’s race.
  • After being P2 in practice on Friday, qualifying P2 for both races and finishing P2 on Saturday, why not try something new? Beating Newgarden on pure pace? Didn’t look favorable.
  • So, despite being second under that caution and just pitting 16 laps prior, McLaughlin was one of five cars to hit pit road. Why not? Why not see if fresh tires could help?
  • “Yeah, we’re at the point now where we you can risk a lot, whether that’s strategy and whatnot,” said McLaughlin.” Ultimately you don’t want to fall any further down in the championship standings. I think we’ve got to put pressure on Alex. We have to make sure he doesn’t get too far ahead. We know how crazy of a race Nashville is. Laguna is new because of the new pavement. I generally think it’s not over. We’re full steam ahead, just pushing. At the end of the day we have to put pressure on Alex as well. That comes from our team and how we work.”
  • He’d restart 10th and it didn’t take much to get him back up to the top five. He’d even get back up to fourth, but it didn’t pan out by time the final pit window opened. His car wasn’t handling well and he’d have to pit with the leaders still. He’d never get back up to second as he’d finish fifth in the end.
• Kyle Kirkwood Solid weekend – He needed this. 7th and 11th. It reverses some bad luck with having rain in Toronto ruin a potential pole (1st, 2nd in practice) to punting Helio Castroneves in the race. He spun while running third in Mid-Ohio. He crashed in Indy. He crashed in Texas and St. Pete. He was ran over in Detroit and Road America on the opening laps of each race. So, to have a clean weekend was a big boost, especially after qualifying only 18th and 17th in the process. The kid has speed. Can he deliver the rest of the way?
• Callum Ilott – He’s shown some oval promise in finishing 9th, 12th, 15th and 14th this year and has improved to 14th in points after 12 races run.
• ECR Lost All Weekend – I had higher hopes for them but they’re proving that Conor Daly wasn’t the problem there. They’re lost. Ryan Hunter-Reay was P2 in the test and had good speed in Friday’s practice. Heck, even Ed Carpenter rolled off fourth in his 200th career series start on Sunday. They were no where to be found the rest of the way.
  • They went 17-23-24 on Saturday and 18-23-24 on Sunday.
  • Rinus VeeKay was 3 laps off pace on Saturday and 2 on Sunday. Carpenter was seven laps down on Saturday and six on Sunday. Hunter-Reay was -6 on Saturday and crashed out on Sunday.
  • Carpenter’s last 10 Iowa finishes are – 18th, 12th, 10th, 19th, 15th, 23rd, 25th, 17th, 24th and 23rd respectively. 
  • Since the Daly swap for RHR, VeeKay has finished 12th, 15th, 13th, 17th and 18th. He’s qualified 15th, 16th, 12th, 15th, 14th.
  • For Hunter-Reay, he’s qualified 27th, 17th, 21st, 16th, 25th and finished 17th, 19th, 26th, 23rd, 24th. He’s been a DNF in 2 of the last 3 races run. Daly had 0 DNF’s in his 7 starts with them with an average finish of 17.71. Hunter-Reay is averaging 21.8. While he’s playing catch up, these were some solid tracks for him in the past and he’s been a no show. I’m not putting this on RHR. This is the team has a lot to still figure out.
• RLL Momentum Lost – They came into the weekend with high hopes but leave disjointed.
  • They went 18-20-28 in Race 1 and 13-19-20 in Race 2. Graham Rahal was the worst finisher in both races. He said this was the worst car that he’s ever driven on an oval.
• Clean race weekend – Just 2 cars found the wall in Rahal on Saturday and Hunter-Reay on Sunday.
• Bottom 6 on Sunday was three part-timers (Ed Carpenter, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Takuma Sato) and all three rookies (Agustin Canapino, Benjamin Pedersen and Sting Ray Robb). Oddly enough, 2 of the 3 rookies were parked. Robb for his tire not being tightened and could have caused a tragedy if hit in the right spot and Pedersen for not keeping pace.