Josef Newgarden: Two-Time IndyCar Champion and Back-to-Back Indy 500 Winner

Josef Newgarden is one of the most successful American drivers of the modern IndyCar era, with two series championships and two consecutive Indianapolis 500 victories. He moved from karts to British Formula Ford and then to Indy Lights before joining the IndyCar Series in 2012. Since 2017 he has raced for Team Penske, the organisation that has shaped most of his career.

Who is Josef Newgarden?

Josef Newgarden is an American racing driver born on 22 December 1990 in Nashville, Tennessee. He races the No. 2 Team Penske Dallara/Chevrolet in the IndyCar Series. He is a two-time IndyCar Series champion, a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner and the 2024 24 Hours of Daytona winner.

His career stands out for its range. He has won on every type of track the series uses, and he has also raced sports cars and taken part in the Race of Champions.

Two series titles, two Indianapolis wins and a Daytona victory make Newgarden one of the most complete drivers of his era.

How did Newgarden start racing?

Newgarden started in karts at 13 and won four championships across 2005 and 2006 before moving into open-wheel cars with Skip Barber in 2006. He won the Formula Ford Festival in 2008 as the first American to do so, then spent 2009 in Britain, where he finished runner-up in the British Formula Ford Championship.

His first race vehicle was a motorised scooter bought at a skate shop, and his father later bought him a kart. When the family looked for stronger competition, they moved to New Castle, Indiana, where a kart facility had been opened by former IndyCar driver Mark Dismore. Newgarden chose local and regional titles over a national schedule so the budget would last, and he won two KRA Junior Can championships in 2006 alongside his junior TAG world titles.

He returned to karts several times to contest the Robo-Pong 200 at New Castle Motorsports Park. That 200-mile endurance race was won twice, in 2011 with Mark Dismore Sr and in 2013 with Mark Dismore Jr as his teammate. Junior car racing in 2007 came between these returns.

Skip Barber racing followed. Newgarden was runner-up in the 2006 Southern Regional series with three wins and seven more podiums. The 2007 national championship brought sixth place and two wins, and the 2008 national title race saw him finish second with three wins. After that season he was selected for a Team USA scholarship that took him to the Formula Ford Festival and the Walter Hayes Trophy.

At the Walter Hayes Trophy he won every qualifying race and started the main event from pole. Wet conditions settled in mid-race, and he crashed to finish sixth. Europe followed in 2009, when he took second in the British Formula Ford Championship with 550 points and led the series for total race wins, and he won two races in the opening round of the Formula Palmer Audi season at Brands Hatch.

The 2010 plan was a British Formula Three drive, but the investor backing it withdrew before the official test session. Newgarden moved to the GP3 Series with Carlin Motorsport instead. He finished 18th overall with eight points, took one pole position at Hockenheimring and finished fifth at the Monza finale.

When did Newgarden first win in IndyCar?

Newgarden won his first IndyCar race in 2015 at Barber Motorsports Park, three seasons after joining the series with Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing in 2012. He added a Toronto win that year, finished seventh in the standings with 431 points, and had already earned his first podium at Baltimore in 2013 and his second at Iowa Speedway in 2014.

Indy Lights came before that. In 2011, racing with Sam Schmidt Motorsports, Newgarden won the season opener on the streets of St. Petersburg and went on to five wins and ten podiums. He clinched the points title with one race to spare, and at New Hampshire he lapped the entire field, the first Indy Lights driver to do so since Thiago Medeiros in March 2004.

He was announced for Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing on 7 December 2011, and he drove for the team from 2012 to 2014. The 2015 season ran under the merged banner of Fisher and Ed Carpenter, CFH Racing. At Barber he climbed from fifth to second on the first lap, led the most laps and won by 2.2 seconds.

In 2016 he started on the front row of the Indianapolis 500 and finished third in the 100th running. A crash at Texas earlier that season had broken his hand and clavicle, yet he was back in the car two weeks later at Road America. Twenty-eight days after that accident he won at Iowa, leading 282 of 300 laps, a series record for most laps led in one race.

How did Newgarden become a two-time champion at Team Penske?

Newgarden joined Team Penske for 2017, when he scored his first win with the team in his third start. He took the 2017 and 2019 IndyCar championships with the team and finished second in the standings in 2020, 2021 and 2022, with the team behind most of his best seasons.

The 2017 title came down to the final race at Sonoma. He had already moved into the points lead after back-to-back wins at Toronto and Mid-Ohio, and a second place at Sonoma was enough to secure his first championship. That season he collected four wins and nine podiums.

The 2017 season also brought friction inside the team. At Gateway he went under teammate Simon Pagenaud very late into turn one, the two cars touched, and Pagenaud was clearly unhappy with the move. Newgarden held on for his fourth win of the year, and the points lead he built carried into the closing rounds.

The 2018 season was less productive, with a fifth place in the standings and three wins. The next year restored his momentum, and the title race that followed was among the closest of his career.

The 2019 title was tighter than the margin suggests. He led the points after every race except the Indianapolis 500, which his teammate Simon Pagenaud won from pole. He sealed his second title at Laguna Seca by 25 points, with four wins and seven podiums across the season.

The defence of that title began slowly in 2020, a year cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. A run of wins and podiums late in the season set up a finale at St. Petersburg. He needed to win and hope Scott Dixon finished no better than ninth. He won, but Dixon finished third and took the title, leaving Newgarden second.

The 2021 season produced four poles but only one win until Mid-Ohio in the tenth race. He added a second win at Gateway, then finished second again after a final round at Long Beach. In 2022 he set a career high with five wins, but the championship went to Will Power after a heavy crash in Iowa interrupted his momentum.

Why is Newgarden called the Oval King?

Newgarden earned the nickname The Oval King after a period from 2019 onward in which he won a large share of IndyCar oval races. The label reflects a particular strength rather than a narrow specialism, since he has won in every format on the calendar.

The clearest example came in 2023. He swept the double header at Iowa Speedway, won at Texas and Indianapolis, and came close to becoming the first driver to win every oval race on the schedule in a single season. That year he finished fifth in the standings, his eighth consecutive top-five season.

He is also known for hard racing with his teammates, and for an outside-line technique on road and street courses. Commentators and drivers informally call that manoeuvre the Josef Newgarden Move, and it has produced some of the most debated finishes in recent IndyCar history.

The best-known episode came at the 2023 Indianapolis 500. After a series of red flags, he passed Marcus Ericsson with two corners to go and then weaved briefly into the pit lane to deny Ericsson clean air. The move was judged legal, but IndyCar banned weaving into the Indianapolis pit lane afterwards for safety and sporting reasons.

What does Newgarden's IndyCar record look like season by season?

Newgarden has two IndyCar Series championships, in 2017 and 2019, and two Indianapolis 500 wins, in 2023 and 2024. He finished second in the standings three years running from 2020 to 2022. The table below lists his most significant seasons across Indy Lights, IndyCar and the Indianapolis 500.

The 2025 season was uneven. A pre-race inspection problem for modified attenuators cost him and Will Power their qualifying points, a US$100,000 fine and a start from the rear at Indianapolis. He climbed to sixth before a fuel pressure problem ended his race on lap 135. The season still ended with a win at Nashville, his home race.

Did Newgarden race outside IndyCar?

Yes. He represented Team USA at the Race of Champions in Riyadh in 2018 and in Mexico City in 2019, took a guest drive in Tony Stewart's Superstar Racing Experience at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway in 2022, and has competed in sports car endurance racing with Porsche Penske Motorsport. His most notable result there is the 2024 24 Hours of Daytona win.

The sports car programme began with a 2023 entry in the 24 Hours of Daytona LMP2 class. Later that year he finished fourth overall at Petit Le Mans in a GTP-class Porsche, sharing the No. 7 car with Matt Campbell and Felipe Nasr. In 2024 he returned to the No. 7 with Campbell, Nasr and Dane Cameron, and the team won the 24 Hours of Daytona after a long race.