Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Speedway, Ind.) — Josef Newgarden won the season-ending race in 2025 at Nashville Superspeedway and still just appeared to want the season to end.
«I’m ready to go home,» he said after the win.
His mannerisms appeared of a driver who might have been over it, either at Team Penske or INDYCAR as a whole. The driver of the No. 2 Chevrolet had won the Indianapolis 500 in back-to-back years (2023 and 2024). He had won INDYCAR titles in 2017 and 2019 but was 12th in the standings in 2025.
Now, six races into 2026, Newgarden seems relatively happy. He sits fifth in the standings with one win (the only oval race so far at Phoenix), two top-fives and four top-10s in six races.
He starts the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday (12:30 p.m. ET on FOX) from the 23rd spot but was fastest in the final Indy 500 practice Friday.
«I put up a fast lap,» Newgarden said Friday in the post-practice news conference. «That’s really all it is. It’s always there is positivity to that in that when the car can do that lap, that is a good thing, but that’s not the whole story when it comes to our race car.
«I think we’ve been relatively solid all month. … We’ve just got to make sure it’s right as Sunday comes around.»
That’s Newgarden. If he has confidence, he isn’t going to totally show it. Maybe he wants his competitors to think he could be a little bit down and out. He knows what he can do — he made dramatic passes at the end of both of his wins in 2023 and 2024.
He enters this Indy 500 feeling good. And the way he talks and his mannerisms indicate he’s feeling better about his INDYCAR situation and his team. Of course, another Indy 500 win would give even more of that feel.
«I sense a good rebalancing in a lot of ways,» Newgarden said about the Penske program in talking to me and other reporters last week. «I see the light at the end of the tunnel. In so many respects, I see speed. I thought we had great speed in the race at Long Beach. … I feel the progress.
«I feel like we’re getting back into a rhythm and a lot of respect. So that’s, that’s a good thing. I think that’s what needs to happen. In a lot of ways, we just need to continue to get better throughout the year. If we can do that. I think we’ll be in a good place by the end of it.»
Newgarden entered 2026 rejuvenated and adamant that he was happy at Team Penske, an organization under the leadership of Jonathan Diuguid, who took over the INDYCAR operation last June after an overhaul of the Penske INDYCAR leadership.
Diuguid served as Newgarden’s strategist for the 2024 Indy 500 win. And he and Newgarden had some tough discussions in the offseason.
«If you ask anybody, he was probably cold at the end of last year, but I think he was under a lot of different stresses and things like that and just wanted to have offseason reset,» Diuguid told me last week. «And I truly believe he did have an offseason reset, and he showed up at [the opener at] San Petersburgo listo para correr».
Diuguid dijo que la clave para él era permitir que Newgarden (y todos los conductores de Penske) se concentraran en conducir. Que él y el equipo directivo tienen que hacer su trabajo para evitar que los pilotos se preocupen por gestionar el personal y sean más frontales y centrales a la hora de responder las preguntas de por qué el equipo está teniendo problemas, como lo hizo el año pasado.
«[We had] Hubo conversaciones muy difíciles y muy francas durante octubre y noviembre, después de que terminó la temporada el año pasado», dijo Diuguid. «Josef pudo contarnos a mí y a algunos otros su percepción de la situación y dónde necesitábamos mejorar.
«Y es de esperar que sienta que hemos respondido a una gran parte de ellos. Tenemos un fuerte camino de desarrollo. Su enfoque ha sido mejorar su desempeño en autódromos, circuitos callejeros, y hemos visto algo de luz al final del túnel allí».
Newgarden enfatiza que algunas cosas no han cambiado en el sentido de la calidad de la gente que lo rodea en Team Penske. Diuguid es su estratega de tiempo completo y Luke Mason sigue siendo su ingeniero.
«En el grupo trabajan muchas personas diferentes», dijo Newgarden durante una conferencia de prensa la semana pasada. «Siempre esperas poder trabajar con diferentes personas en determinadas capacidades. Jonathan era uno de esos tipos, me encantaría trabajar con Jonathan. Ya tenía un gran ingeniero.
«Es curioso cómo cambia. Ves fortalezas en todos dentro de este grupo. Lo que estoy tratando de contextualizar es que puede haber movimientos dentro de la organización, pero para mí se siente igual cada día que entro por la puerta».
Y él dice que eso es algo bueno.
«Me encanta ser parte de esta organización», dijo Newgarden durante una conferencia de prensa la semana pasada. «Me encanta trabajar con mis compañeros de equipo. Eso es realmente lo que me motiva todos los días.
«Tenemos un gran grupo de personas que constantemente se impulsan unos a otros hacia adelante… Me encanta trabajar con la gente de este equipo».
