Newgarden passes team mates to win as Penske dominate in Iowa

Josef Newgarden powered his way past pole winner Will Power to claim victory in the first of two IndyCar races at Iowa Speedway this weekend.

By the end of the 250-lap race Newgarden was on the point of putting Power a lap down. He clinched his third win of the 2023 season after a near-perfect day for the entire Penske operation. The Indianapolis 500 winner moves within 98 points of championship leader Alex Palou who finished – by his standards – a lowly eighth.

The first 150 laps were dominated by the Penske trio of Power, Newgarden, and Scott McLaughlin. From pole, Power negotiated lapped traffic perfectly as he led 119 of the first 121 laps. McLaughlin ran second behind him until he was overtaken by Newgarden, and after gaining second place, Newgarden closed in on Power and took the lead on lap 121.

Even after Power brushed the wall out of turn four and dropped from second to fourth, Newgarden continued the Penske stranglehold at the front of the field. Only six cars remained on the lead lap by the time the first caution flag of the race was shown on lap 151, after Graham Rahal crashed out of turn four and broke his right-front suspension.

It was the only caution period in an otherwise frantic race dominated by the sheer pace of the three Penske Dallara-Chevrolets. Newgarden and Power led 248 of the race’s 250 laps between them, as Newgarden retained the lead after his final pit stop and drove on to the victory by 3.3 seconds.

The win was Newgarden’s fifth at Iowa, extending his personal record at the seven-eighths mile oval. He’ll aim to complete the weekend sweep that eluded him last year when he starts seventh for the second Iowa 250 tomorrow.

McLaughlin closed to within a second of Newgarden late but couldn’t make his way through the traffic quickly enough to stay with his team mate, and finished second – his best finish since he won at Barber Motorsports Park. Pato O’Ward finished third, making it a clean sweep for Chevrolet engines on the podium.

Marcus Ericsson was fourth, followed by Power, the last driver on the lead lap. Scott Dixon fell off the lead lap in the middle stages of the race, but aided by the wave-around given to lapped cars during the caution period, he recovered to finish sixth.

Kyle Kirkwood drove from 17th on the grid to finish seventh ahead of Palou. Takuma Sato, in the third start of his ovals-only season for Ganassi, took ninth. Alexander Rossi completed the top ten after climbing from 20th on the grid.

Palou’s lead in the championship was trimmed to just 98 points heading into tomorrow’s race, while Newgarden moves back into second in the standings. Though Newgarden will start that race seventh while his team mates share the front row again, if he can repeat today’s performance he stands an excellent chance of scoring back-to-back wins.

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Iowa 250 race results

Position	Car	Driver	Team	Engine
1	2	Josef Newgarden	Penske	Chevrolet
2	3	Scott McLaughlin	Penske	Chevrolet
3	5	Pato O’Ward	McLaren	Chevrolet
4	8	Marcus Ericsson	Ganassi	Honda
5	12	Will Power	Penske	Chevrolet
6	9	Scott Dixon	Ganassi	Honda
7	27	Kyle Kirkwood	Andretti	Honda
8	10	Alex Palou	Ganassi	Honda
9	11	Takuma Sato	Ganassi	Honda
10	7	Alexander Rossi	McLaren	Chevrolet
11	28	Romain Grosjean	Andretti	Honda
12	18	David Malukas	Coyne/HMD	Honda
13	6	Felix Rosenqvist	McLaren	Chevrolet
14	06	Helio Castroneves	Meyer Shank	Honda
15	77	Callum Ilott	Juncos Hollinger	Chevrolet
16	78	Agustin Canapino	Juncos Hollinger	Chevrolet
17	21	Rinus VeeKay	Carpenter	Chevrolet
18	30	Jack Harvey	RLL	Honda
19	26	Colton Herta	Andretti	Honda
20	45	Christian Lundgaard	RLL	Honda
21	60	Conor Daly	Meyer Shank	Honda
22	29	Devlin DeFrancesco	Andretti	Honda
23	20	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Carpenter	Chevrolet
24	33	Ed Carpenter	Carpenter	Chevrolet
25	51	Sting Ray Robb	Coyne/RWR	Honda
26	14	Santino Ferrucci	Foyt	Chevrolet
27	55	Benjamin Pedersen	Foyt	Chevrolet
28	15	Graham Rahal	RLL	Honda

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