Josef Newgarden became the first driver since Helio Castroneves in 2001-02 to win back-to-back Indianapolis 500 races. Newgarden passed Pato O’Ward on the final lap of the May 26 race to claim another victory.

In securing Team Penske’s 20th Indianapolis 500 victory in a race in which the organization swept the front row for the first time since 1988, how does Newgarden view the overall season when the collective team won eight of 17 runs but that Scott McLaughlin was Penske’s leading point scorer in the third?

“I think we need to split the season,” Newgarden said. “As far as the Indy 500 goes, it’s been a very successful year. We couldn’t be more successful for the whole team. For this same point, it is very, very gratifying. I think in many ways what we were looking for most was to fix May, and we fixed every aspect of it this year.

Team Penske entered the 2020 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season with back-to-back “500” victories from Will Power in 2018 and Simon Pagenaud in 2019. Newgarden was also the defending series champion.

However, Penske drivers qualified 13th, 22nd, 25th and 28th in 2020 at Indy and finished fifth, 11th, 14th and 18th. It was a precursor to four frustrating years in the biggest race of the season where Power’s 11th place finish in 2022 was the top position on the Team Penske “500” grid between 2020-23.

The team led a combined 25 laps of the 800 race laps during that four-year period.

This is why Newgarden’s victory in 2023, when Newgarden moved up from 17th place initially, could have masked the deficit. The team led six laps that day, with the other finishing positions being 14th and 23rd.

According to Newgarden, Team Penske continued to look to improve and led 92 of the 200 laps of the race last May, in addition to sweeping the front row in qualifying. But Newgarden dipped in other areas the rest of the season. His only other victory came at World Wide Technology Raceway after winning four times in 2023.

Newgarden finished eighth in points, his worst championship finish since 2014. Since joining Team Penske in 2017, Newgarden had finished first, fifth, first, second, second, second and fifth, respectively.

“Personally, for Car 2, from a championship perspective, it’s been a really disastrous year,” he said. “I don’t know how to put it other than dire. I guess what I would say is that sometimes it’s not your year or sometimes it’s not your day, these two have been true several times this season, and that’s how it is is happening.

The prime example was front-row qualifying for the two Milwaukee Mile races on August 31 and September 1, but he was caught out by crashes on both days. Newgarden and Marcus Ericsson had a racing incident on lap 146 of the first 250 laps, and a day later Newgarden was forced out from behind during a rough race start.

Newgarden also finished fourth on April 21 at Long Beach, but late-race contact while battling for the lead with Colton Herta in the final turn cost him a potential top-two finish. Detroit was a disaster, finishing 26th after qualifying third. At WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, Newgarden finished fifth on a late restart, but dropped his tires off the track and slipped to 19th. In Toronto, pit road issues dropped him from the podium to 11th place.

Between bad luck, costly mistakes and Push to Pass penalties that erased a season-opening victory in St. Petersburg, Newgarden is looking forward to a reset in 2025. He will attempt to become a three-time champion in 2025 and the first driver to win three consecutive races of the Indianapolis 500.

“I’m definitely a perfectionist,” he said. “I kind of go by the numbers, and it’s the numbers that count. But in reality, there are so many more things outside of our control as a team that aren’t always reflected in the numbers. The good thing that always brings comfort, and perhaps I’ve always taken comfort in personally, is that the people in the know, the people who are on the team, know what we do well and know what we accomplish. throughout the year, regardless of the results.

“I come back to what motivates me, it is the potential of car number 2. The potential of car #2 is much greater than people see. I don’t want to sound like a broken record and keep using that phrase, but it’s true: we still haven’t reached our ceiling. This makes me excited. We’re going to reset for next year and try to be better. That’s all you can do.