Photo Credit: Chris Owens/IndyCar
Josef Newgarden, driver of the No. 21 Fuzzy’s Ultra Premium Vodka Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet, comes into the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama as the defending race winner from last year when he scored his first IndyCar career victory.
“It felt great for us. We’ve always been kind of strong here from a speed standpoint, thereabouts in the top-10,” he said. “Last year we made a good leap forward and got inside the top-six. Then the race was really, really good for us, and we were strong and could really run with anyone. I felt, that day and could control the pace. Not cruise out front, but we just– we could do our thing. Saving fuel, and it seemed like a really clean run to the finish. So it means a lot.
“Thinking about it coming in, it’s one of the best tracks we go to. It’s so beautiful. They do just an amazing job, I feel like, at this facility. It’s a pleasure to come here and run, and you get a lot of fans because of that. It’s a great place for people to come watch an IndyCar race, and it’s really a run track to drive.”
“So to be able to win here and to get my first win, its always going to be pretty special to me now.”
Being that the race is only about four hours from Tennesse, Newgarden’s home state, many have called his home track.
“Yeah, everyone’s always said that it’s my home track, which is fine with me,” he said. “I grew up in Nashville, obviously, three hours away, and it was one of the tracks when I was a kid – kid. I was 16, 17. But when I was racing Junior Formula cars, this was one of my favorite tracks. I loved running Skip Barber cars around here. I always have thought it was just a blast. That was really the only car I have driven, other than the IndyCar, around here. It’s not nearly as powerful, but to drive an IndyCar around here has been a treat.”
The start of the season has be sort of substandard for Newgarden with a best finish of sixth in the first three races, but he is looking for better results this weekend.
“We’ve had a slow start to the year,” he said. “It’s not been as good was we wanted. It’s not been as terrible as it probably could have been. St. Petersburg was tough for us. We had kind of an electrical gremlin that put is out of the race. That started the foot off really wrong.
“And then I think Phoenix was a tough pill to swallow. I felt like we had really good cars there, both Ed and I, and we weren’t able to capitalize on that. We finished sixth, which wasn’t bad but wasn’t near the potential, I think, of what we had around there. That was tough. I think we had a winning car to compete there, and it would have been nice to race Scott and some of the other guys at the end.
“And then Long Beach just was slightly underwhelming, we were in the top-10 all weekend but couldn’t really climb to the top-five like we needed to. I think we could have finished higher than 10th at the end of the day, but probably sixth or seventh is where we lied that weekend. It just was what it was. We were a little under performing there.”
Newgarden added that despite the results, there’s no doubt in his mind that he has a good team around him with a lot of confidence based on how well Barber, and other tracks for that matter, went last year.
“That gives you a lot of confidence when you can go and compete at so many different tracks like we did last year,” he said. “I don’t have any lost faith in what we’re doing. I think we’ll be good this weekend.
The Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama will be run on Sunday April 24th.
