Josef Newgarden needs to bounce back after three-race skid

Apr 18, 2026; Long Beach, California, USA; Team Penske driver Josef Newgarden (2) during qualifying at Long Beach Street Circuit.

(Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images)

Josef Newgarden started off the NTT IndyCar season hot. At the opening race in St. Petersburg, he qualified 23rd, but worked his way through the field and ended up finishing in seventh place, doing some nice damage control early on in the year. Then, not even a week later in Phoenix, Newgarden won from starting second place and took the championship lead. However, since the Good Ranchers 250, he’s placed tenth or lower in the last three races, including a 14th-place finish last Sunday in Long Beach.

The fact that Newgarden got a win early on in the season was huge for him. In 2025, he didn’t get a single victory until the last race of the season in Nashville, which also happens to be his home Grand Prix. With the win in Tennessee, he extended his yearly streak to 11 straight seasons with at least one win since joining Team Penske, which was in obvious jeopardy.

Before that Music City Grand Prix victory, though, last season wasn’t an easy one for Newgarden. Newgarden would finish the season with 312 points and 12th in the championship, with an average finishing position of 15th. That’s a huge fall from grace, as in the years prior with Team Penske, Newgarden won two championships, two consecutive Indy 500’s, and was the runner-up three times in a row after his two titles.

Unfortunately for Newgarden this season, it seems as if the same case is starting to happen again. The seventh and first place finishes in the first two races of the year are carrying his season, as right now, despite the 15th place finish in Arlington, just squeezing into the top ten in Alabama, and Long Beach, he’s still only 75 points behind and sixth in the championship battle.

Long Beach was an all-around mess for Newgarden. Newgarden started the race in the middle of the order, and Team Penske brought him into the pits early to try to get anything working for him. When a piece of the strategy started to come into place, a mistake from Newgarden brought the biggest flat spots on the front left tire that we’ve seen throughout the first five races. Then, as it seemed it couldn’t get any worse, Newgarden ran over a piece of carbon fibre with his front right tire. He didn’t climb up in the order after his last pit stop.

No one has been able to solve Alex Palou and his Chip Ganassi racing machine the last three years, and he’s once again back into the championship lead after winning at Long Beach. Newgarden, after saying that this is a “full attack” season for him and that he’s going to be pushing for that third championship, needs to find more consistency in that #2 car and hope that this is only a three-race skid.