Bourdais, Newgarden focused on good finishes

Sebastien Bourdais and Josef Newgarden said that preserving their position was more important than challenging James Hinchcliffe for the win during the final restart in the Verizon IndyCar Series race at Long Beach on Sunday.

Following a late caution to allow for Ryan Hunter-Reay's broken Andretti car to be retrieved, the race was restarted with two laps to go. Hinchcliffe shot away relatively unchallenged to claim his first win since NOLA in April 2015, but Bourdais, who was behind him, said that from his standpoint it was about weighing up the risk versus the reward.

"Quite often on restarts, I first of all try not to make any mistakes," said the Frenchman, who retained his lead in the championship with his second place.

"I'm more focused on trying to hold my position than trying to get the guy [ahead]. You never know what's going to happen. You try to make a move, sometimes you become a victim of trying – you lose a position. It's quite easy to do around here, especially on restarts. There's not much rubber to pick up on your tires; it's difficult to put power down. I think everyone was very composed, holding steady, to see how it was going to shake out.

"[Long Beach] is a tough place to pass, especially when it's a straight-up fight. Everyone had the same tires, same strategy. Everyone was on 'push to pass' right after the restart. It really didn't look like there was much to hope for. Quite honestly, I was happy with where we were at, just looking forward to bringing it home and taking the points."

Newgarden, whose third place represented his first podium since moving to Team Penske, agreed.

"From my vantage point, it looked like two things," he said. "Bourdais tried to finish where he was. I was trying to do that to some degree, I wanted to get him, [but] when you're at that point in the race, you don't want to do something stupid.

"Trying to get that one last position on two laps to go, doing something stupid to take you to the back ... it's not worth the risk sometimes.

"But then on top of that, you had Hinch just go as soon as he could. There was no 'get on the straight, set up, then restart.' Which ... I don't blame him. If I'm in the lead, two laps to go, restarting, just go as soon as you can.

"There's nothing dirty about what he did today. I would have done the same thing as James. I think you saw both things, everybody was trying to keep where they were at. I was pushing hard to try to get Seb, but being smart about it. I think James was trying to get as early a launch as he could to protect [his lead], and that's probably what you saw."