Josef Newgarden feels pressures in Nashville’s first IndyCar road race
Nashville resident and two-time IndyCar champion Josef Newgarden said he feels pressure to win Sunday’s inaugural Big Machine Grand Prix in downtown.
Mike Organ, Nashville Tennessean
The first time Josef Newgarden woke up Monday morning, he felt like the world was spinning around him.
The second time the two-time IndyCar champion woke up Monday morning, he was worried.
“It was very sudden. I woke up in the middle of the night and I started getting vertigo conditions,” the back-to-back Indianapolis 500 winner told The Tennessean on his way home from the doctor’s office Monday afternoon. “I’ve never had that.”
Newgarden, who grew up in Hendersonville, had been sleeping in his own bed because he is in town for Sunday’s Music City Grand Prix at Nashville Superspeedway.
So, after contemplating his options, he decided to pay a visit to his physical therapist.
“I was like, ‘I think this is muscular,’ ” Newgarden said.
By late Monday afternoon, after a 90-minute session, he felt back on his axis.
“I think it’s all good,” he said.
Just in time for him to continue preparing for the IndyCar Series season finale. This year’s race moves from the streets of Nashville to the oval speedway in Lebanon.
Josef Newgarden on disqualification: ‘It was illuminating’
Josef Newgarden woke up the Monday morning of March 11 the winner of the season-opening Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
Newgarden woke up the Wednesday morning of April 24 not the winner of the season-opening Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
Six weeks after the victory, IndyCar disqualified Newgarden and one of his teammates after it was determined they violated rules surrounding the use of its push-to-pass system, which is designed to make races more exciting.
Essentially, the mechanism gives cars short bursts of power — 150-200 seconds per race — with the push of a button and is used at the driver’s discretion.
“You have to learn how to face those things head-on, even when you least expect them,” Newgarden said. “I can promise you, nobody in our group was expecting something like this to land on our front doorstep.”
“It was illuminating in a lot of ways for me as an individual and a competitor,” he said. “I wasn’t asking to be put in that situation . . .
“In a lot of ways I’m thankful. You have to understand people’s true intentions and their true colors at the end of the day, and that showed me a lot of people’s ambitions.”
His other win this season besides Indy also was clouded with controversy — and garnered a middle finger from Will Power, one of his teammates. Newgarden’s late, slow restart with nine laps to go was called into question and contributed to a crash that took Power out of the race.
Josef Newgarden has never raced at Nashville Superspeedway
Josef Newgarden woke up on Saturday and Sunday mornings as a kid in Hendersonville eager to watch the races taking place a little more than 30 miles down the road in Lebanon.
He will wake up this Sunday morning eager to drive in a race there.
That this year’s competition moves from the streets of downtown to the paved oval east of town only adds to the intrigue for Newgarden, who has two wins and six top-10 finishes this season.
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“I used to watch races at Nashville Superspeedway growing up,” he said. “I’ve never had an opportunity to race there.
“To some degree, I would have loved the race on Broadway. I was excited for that. I’m personally equally excited about going (to Nashville Superspeedway).”
Newgarden finished fourth in last year’s Nashville race and was in contention for the series championship going into it.
This year, he is in eight place with 365 points; the DQ from the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg cost him 53 points.
“Oddly enough, it seems like it’s a while ago now,” Newgarden said of the season-opening race. “That situation in particular was very difficult.”
Paul Skrbina is a sports enterprise reporter covering the Predators, Titans, Nashville SC, local colleges and local sports for The Tennessean. Reach him at pskrbina@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @paulskrbina. Follow his work here.
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Publish date : 2024-09-10 23:05:00
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