Kallmann: A long, strange day ultimately shows how magical the Indianapolis 500 can be
INDIANAPOLIS – We worried for four days to wait for four hours to race for 40 seconds. That’s what the front end of the 108th Indianapolis 500 looked like.
Dread. Rain. Crash.
Engine failure. Crash. More engine failures, more crashes.
And then, ultimately, magic.
What happened by the end Sunday was a reminder of what Indy is at its finest, 200 laps of urgency with an incredible back-and-forth battle between the most popular full-timer in the IndyCar garage and the series’ latest heel. Both finished in tears, on opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, as a NASCAR champion helicoptered off for a flight to another big race three states away.
“We left it all on the track,” back-to-back winner Josef Newgarden said. “There was nothing that we were going to come home and regret.”
Newgarden passed Pato O’Ward for the lead for the final time with less than half a lap to go to become the first repeat since Helio Castroneves in 2001-02. In doing so, he gave Team Penske a record-extending 20th victory and Chevrolet its 13th.
Again the 33-year-old Tennessean parked on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s finish line bricks, leapt from his car and ran through the stands to soak in the love of a tiny fraction of the 350,000 fans who endured a wicked storm and long day.
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This visit was different, of course.
A year ago Newgarden was the beleaguered two-time series champion who’d been frustrated 11 times before on his sport’s biggest day. This time he was a driver racing with part of his team at home, suspended for cheating in the season opener.
The driver and team have said the violation – using incorrect engine control software that gave Newgarden an advantage on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida – was an honest mistake, but some peers and plenty of hardcore fans don’t buy their contention.
“In an odd way … I’m grateful for the experience,” Newgarden said. “I think it’s good. It’s been a very illuminating experience to me, more from the outside world. … It’s an experience that it’s got to either break you or tough you up, and for me, that’s all I’ll say about it.
“We’ve been moving forward. We’ve never worked together more as a group than this weekend, and I thought that was difficult to do.”
O’Ward was the beneficiary when Newgarden was stripped of his St. Pete trophy, not that that mattered to the Mexican fan favorite Sunday.
He had finished runner-up once before in the 500 and crashed fighting for the lead last year. This time he swapped the lead five times with Newgarden in the final seven laps before finishing 0.3417 seconds behind.
“I think in a way I’ve cracked a code and I know how to position myself to win this race,” O’Ward said, having had a half-hour to gather his thoughts. “I know I can win this race, and I know that I know how to also protect a good result when maybe the win isn’t in the cards for me.
“But yeah, just in a race like that where it was a constant emotional roller coaster where things … weren’t going perfectly smooth, they really weren’t, but I think the team did a fantastic job, gave me an opportunity.”
Even if the two drivers were swept with opposite emotions as the checkered flag flew, each was complimentary of the way the other raced on a day eight drivers crashed between the first lap and 147th.
“I don’t think it works unless you’re racing someone like Pato,” Newgarden said of his outside charge in Turn 3. “It’s not that Pato didn’t race me hard, he just raced me clean. That move doesn’t work unless you’re racing someone like that. It just doesn’t. It’s very easy that that doesn’t work out.”
O’Ward generalized in calling some of his competitors “maniacs” in a race with 49 lead changes among 18 drivers.
To be sure, some of the moves and saves provided the sort of 230 mph excitement the Indianapolis 500 can bring, still without wrecking the run to the finish for Newgarden and O’Ward.
“I was glad that I was racing somebody that I can trust and somebody that I think is a fantastic competitor,” O’Ward said. “He’s on a fantastic team. For us, I think it’s a privilege to really make them sweat.”
Including a handful of Honda failures, the race went yellow eight times, but amazingly the final 46 laps ran under the green flag. The finish was quite a contrast to a year earlier, when Newgarden won a one-lap shootout with Marcus Ericsson.
“Very different races, but both hard fought and deserved as far as for our team and the effort that was put in, the car that was on track, the execution,” said Newgarden, who won from the 17th starting spot last year and third Sunday. “I feel very similar about them.”
When May began, O’Ward ranked no higher than second on his team among the list of best stories.
The attention, from rookie orientation through much of the race, was focused on super versatile 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson, who joined McLaren for his first IndyCar race.
The late morning thunderstorm wiped out Larson’s shot at contesting the full 1,100-mile double at Indy and Charlotte, and then speeding in the pits – a rookie mistake – cost Larson a chance to contend in the 500.
Still, it was a good day for racing that the most ambitious and talented American racer of his generation was able to check another box while also exposing both open wheel and stock car fans to another side of the sport.
“Man, the restarts were a lot of fun. I had an issue on one and lost some spots, but I was able to learn a lot and work my way back forward,” Larson said before leaving. “I hate that I got that speeding penalty. I think it would have been a lot of fun to battle there at the end."
Newgarden’s news conference was still in progress when Larson trotted to his pit at Charlotte Motor Speedway. About the time Larson was pulling on his helmet, NASCAR red-flagged the race due to lightning.
Suddenly a strange day for the Indy 500 – but a magical one – had come full circle.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Josef Newgarden's second Indianapolis 500 win caps long, strange day
