Ahead of the opening round of the 2023 IndyCar season, Josef Newgarden has revealed that he and Team Penske have been focusing even more effort on the Indianapolis 500 during the offseason.
Newgarden has never won the Indy 500 in his 11 attempts, despite winning 25 races and two championships during those years.
Virtually every team puts heavy weight on the Memorial Day weekend race, but Roger Penske has extra motivation to get his team back into the winner’s circle now that he owns both the series and the speedway.
The historic owner is nearly 86 years old, and likely places even more value on winning the Indy 500 since he purchased the NTT IndyCar Series in 2020.
“No doubt. It’s number one,” said Newgarden when asked if the Indy 500 has been the team’s top focus. “It’s the number one objective. There’s just no excuse for it. We have to be better at Indianapolis, full stop.
“I can tell you it wasn’t from a lack of trying last off-season. We thought we were going to be exactly where we wanted to be. I think we made tremendous progress, but we weren’t fully there. We’re doubling down again. No excuses. We’ve got to make it better.
“We’re trying to continue to dive deeper into areas we’ve already been through multiple times. We’re going to go through them again, keep hammering them. We keep finding little things. I do believe there is more. I think we need to continue to have that attitude because when you don’t have that attitude is when you stay flat and you go in reverse.
“Indianapolis is obviously the most glaring example of where we can continue to push forward. There’s other areas where we’ve excelled better, but Indianapolis is still a weak point for us.”
There will be fewer points riding on the Indy 500 this season, however, as drivers in the upcoming race will not be awarded double points for the first time since 2013. Not that points are the main reason teams focus their efforts on the big race, but it is a consideration nonetheless.
Newgarden went on to confirm that he has never really been a fan of the race awarding double points, and reverting the event to award a normal amount of points allows a driver to be penalized less heavily in the overall standings if they were to have a poor race.
“I have no gripes with the points system. I think it’s fine the way it is. I guess now that I’m really diving into it mentally, the only thing that I’ve not loved is the double points at Indy. I was never a fan of double points anywhere.
“I think the points are what they are. You need to make the most of it, understand how they reward you.”
