Josef Newgarden salvages IndyCar season at his home track with his first win

LEBANON Tenn AP Josef Newgarden salvaged his miserable year by winning his first race of the season Sunday at Nashville Superspeedway his home track in the IndyCar finale He celebrated the recovery the exact same way he did after his two Indianapolis victories Newgarden climbed through a hole in the fence and entered the grandstands where he triumphantly raised his arms in the air in front of a gaggle of friends and family I am just glad we got one without anything going wrong Newgarden reported It s rewarding for our crew It s great for our association Been a tough tough year and good to get a win here at the end His Unit Penske crew sprinted from pit lane to celebrate with him on track They had to pass Alex Palou who clinched his fourth IndyCar title with two races remaining as he did celebratory doughnuts in the infield grass following his second-place finish It was just the second win of the season for Unit Penske which along with Newgarden has had a horrific year and it prevented Newgarden from going winless for the first time since Newgarden benefited from issues to a multitude of drivers and took the lead for good with laps remaining when teammate Scott McLaughlin slid up the track and brushed the wall as Newgarden sailed past him IndyCar at once threw the caution and McLaughlin didn t seem to have any damage to his car but he wasn t even able to challenge Newgarden on the restart with laps to go Newgarden came into the race th in the standings lowest of the Crew Penske trio of drivers and had only two podium finishes through races He ended the season with four total top-five finishes one upside-down flip and despite his win Sunday what will likely go down as the worst of his years in IndyCar The last nine wins of Newgarden s career are all on ovals and Sunday s win moved him from th to th in the final season standings still his lowest finish since McLaughlin finished third O Ward crashes Pato O Ward started from the pole and seemed headed toward a third mastery until a tire failure caused him to crash while leading O Ward had already locked up second in the championship standings and wished to give McLaren Racing a sweep of the day after Oscar Piastri won the Dutch Grand Prix It would have been the first time in years that McLaren won the IndyCar and Formula races on the same day He noted he d had a previous tire failure at Nashville during a test and had concerns about the durability of the Firestones all weekend Earlier in the race Palou had a tire failure not long after a breathtaking wheel-to-wheel fight with O Ward for the lead Hopefully Firestone can help us out for next year because it sucks kind of knowing that a tire failure can be a possibility and multiple cars having that issue and then the guys hitting the wall at mph are us O Ward commented I can tell you you can really feel those hits so I really hope that they can somewhat fix that and for that not to be a concern because we don t like to go racing with that in the back of our heads Malukas helicoptered out David Malukas has been widely rumored since the start of the season to be headed to Association Penske to replace Will Power and if Nashville was his last race with A J Foyt Racing it was rough Malukas crashed laps into the race and was helicoptered out of the track for further anatomical evaluation IndyCar and his race club reported he was awake and alert and being transported to another facility for further evaluation Malukas was racing Louis Foster who was one lap down and refused to give Malukas any room The contact between the cars sent Malukas spinning into the wall The anatomical crew had to help Malukas from the car and he sat outside it head down as he was surrounded by personnel Track workers also had to do repair work to the barrier that Malukas hit AP auto racing https apnews com hub auto-racing Source