MADISON, Ill — Josef Newgarden will start on the pole for Sunday’s Bommarito Automotive Group 500 (3:30 p.m. ET, NBC, INDYCAR Radio Network). Now, can he stay there?

With track position and pit sequences mattering, starting spots were key here. We’ve seen 9 straight Gateway winners coming from a top five starting spot and 8 of the last 9 from the top 2 rows.

However, there’s some pole winners bad luck though too. You would think since qualifying means a lot, the pole winner would have success. In fact, it’s the opposite in Gateway. There’s not been a pole winner here since Helio Castroneves did it in 2003. For Iowa, the pole winner is now 1-for-19.

Other than Josef Newgarden, we’ve had a new winner of this race each time. Only the best win at Gateway too. Names like Paul Tracy (1997), Alex Zanardi (1998), Michael Andretti (1999), Juan Pablo Montoya (2000), Al Unser Jr. (2001), Gil de Ferran (2002), Helio Castroneves (2003), Josef Newgarden (2017,2020, 2021, 2022), Will Power (2018), Takuma Sato (2019) and Scott Dixon (2020) all won on the 1.25-mile oval heading into this weekend.

Also, 5 out of the last 6 races at WWTR have seen the driver that led the most laps fail to win. In 2018, Scott Dixon led 145 laps but finished third. In 2019, Santino Ferrucci led 97 laps but finished fourth. In 2020, Pato O’Ward (94 laps in Race 1) and Takuma Sato (66 laps led in Race 2) finished third and ninth respectively and last year, Power led 128 of 260 laps and didn’t win.

Chevy has won 13 of the last 15 short oval races. Team Penske has won 11 of the 13 races for the Chevy camp including going 7-for-9 here. Penske shared the front row in both Iowa races and went 1-2-5 in each too. They also led 492 of 500 laps (98.4%) that weekend. With how much success that they have here, can they go 1-2-3 on Sunday?

The last time someone went 1-2-3 in an INDYCAR race was in 2020 at Mid-Ohio when Andretti Autosport swept the podium with Colton Herta, Alexander Rossi and Ryan Hunter-Reay. The last time before that was Team Penske in Sonoma in the 2017 season finale with Simon Pagenaud, Josef Newgarden and Will Power.

It’s a feat that’s only happened 13 times in general with Penske doing it 9 of the times. Penske has been the top dog on short ovals in general since 2018 with 11 wins in 15 tries. Josef Newgarden is tops among drivers with winning 9 of those 11 races for Penske himself.

Top 5 Finishers

1. 5 O’Ward

2. 2 Newgarden

3. 6 Rosenqvist

4. 3 McLaughlin

5. 26 Herta