INDYCAR 2016 Driver Review: Josef Newgarden

Just when you thought that the Verizon IndyCar Series had run out of ways to surprise, 2016 came along. The championship was won by a guy who looked all at sea 12 months earlier, his closest rival didn't even participate in the first race, and the winner of the 100th Running of the Indianapolis 500 was a recent F1 refugee who apparently figured out how to make a car work without fuel.

Twenty-four drivers made at least three starts during the 2016 season, and each one is a story. Join RACER each day as we retrace their journeys.

JOSEF NEWGARDEN

NO. 21 ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET

2016 Best result: 1st (Iowa)
2016 Championship position: 4th (502 points)

Newgarden impressed everyone in 2015, and in 2016 he managed to up his game again. Where did you see the most improvement?

MILLER: Taking what the car had that day and just driving smarter. He still did everything possibly to get to the front (and led 313 laps) but didn't force things, and the only mistake he made in competition all season came while driving with one hand at Toronto. But what really surfaced in 2016 was the kid's toughness after getting stuffed into the wall at Texas. He showed the kind of moxie that was common place in the '60s - driving through the pain - and that even impressed A.J.

PRUETT: Ovals, and qualifying. Josef made nine starts inside the top 10 which helped secure strong finishes in almost every instance, and barring Texas, oval finishes of sixth (Phoenix), third (Indy 500) and the double points that came with his stellar performance, a win (Iowa) and fourth (Pocono) meant he backed up a season filled with a bunch of solid road and street course performances. The kid used 2016 to prove he’s a threat to win at every track, and a new title contender.

Will leaving ECR for Team Penske be a blessing or a curse?

MILLER: More a curse to the series than Newgarden, because he and Graham Rahal were consistently nipping at the big dogs and now that balance of power has shifted even more with JoNew in the finest kennel. It was a cool story with Ed Carpenter's little All-American team, but during the past 50 years, moving in with Roger Penske has proven to be a winner for just about every driver, and this will blossom into another big success story.

PRUETT: A blessing. It just depends on the timing of its arrival. He’s seven years younger than Pagenaud, 10 years younger than Power, and Castroneves is 16 laps up on Tennessee’s finest IndyCar driver. Among the various reasons behind the signing, Penske sees this 25-year-old phenom as a long-term solution. The questions below delve into the reasons, so I won’t repeat them here, but Josef will either show he’s the heir to Castroneves and Power whenever they hang up their helmets, or Roger will give someone else a try if the results fail to appear. I can’t see how the marriage of Penske and Newgarden is anything other than an amazing success, so I anticipate the move being hailed as a blessing for both sides at some point in the near future.

Up until this point, he's been the primary focus of whatever team he has driven for. Will having to work amongst a group of all-stars be a culture shock?

MILLER: Not with Newgarden's temperament. He'll fit into any situation and be a sponge from his older teammates. He's only 25, but already knows how to play the game.

PRUETT: I sure hope so. That process is part of Josef’s evolution as a frontline IndyCar driver, and how he ends up handling the ferocious speed of an OCD all-star like Will Power, the silent assassin style of Simon Pagenaud, or the unflinching consistency of Helio Castroneves is possibly the biggest thread to follow in the Penske camp next year.

We know Newgarden has crazy speed, races as hard as any of the champions, and is still learning his craft. Being thrown into Roger’s lion’s den is where we’ll get so see what Josef is made of while under extreme pressure. Beyond the built-in pressure to appease Penske and the team’s sponsors, Newgarden will have all of the support and tools at his disposal to go toe-to-toe with Pagenaud and Power (in particular), but how will he fare if the two established team leaders are a few tenths faster in the opening rounds?

Newgarden handled his former boss, Ed Carpenter, with ease, and was never seriously challenged by whoever was in Carpenter’s car for the road and street courses. Now, with a pair of road racing nightmares in the same team and a three-time Indy 500 winner to apply pressure on the ovals, Newgarden’s mental strength will be tested every single session.

We think he’s a future champion, but how he handles his teammates on the stopwatch and at the finish line will tell us whether we’re right or wrong.

Will not having Jeremy Milless as his engineer make a difference?

MILLER: It might for a little while at certain places, because he and Jeremy had such great chemistry. But based on his initial test at Road America, I don't think it will linger. Not at Team Penske. Not with all that information.

PRUETT:  In this era of limited testing, it absolutely will. The easy flow of information and needs between Josef and Jeremy was the key ingredient that transformed Newgarden into a regular contender. Penske’s Brian Campe is just as talented as Milless, but with the aforementioned testing restrictions, he and his new driver will learn a lot more about each other’s working styles and communication tendencies after the season gets underway. In light of the one-year settling period Pagenaud and Ben Bretzman required at Penske, Campe and Newgarden will certainly win together; the only question is whether that happens in 2017 or 2018.

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