Josef Newgarden faces first winless season since 2014 if he doesn't win at Nashville
- Last updated: August 31, 2025 | 10:03
Josef Newgarden, two-time IndyCar champion and two-time Indianapolis 500 winner, wrote a children's book about his first Indy victory titled "Josef's Big Dream.”
Midway through this miserable year he proposed a sequel: "Josef's Bad Season.”
Gallows humor, sure, but he's not really laughing. If Newgarden doesn't win Sunday's season finale at Nashville Superspeedway, his home race, it will mark his first winless season since 2014.
"I'm like ready for someone to step around a corner with a bat and smack me in the face every two seconds,” Newgarden said after qualifying sixth Saturday at Nashville. "I'm just moving a little jerky these days.”
It wasn't supposed to be this way, and there were no indications when he opened the year with a third-place finish at St. Pete. Fast-forward 16 races and Newgarden is 16th in the standings, lowest of the Team Penske trio of drivers in what's been an equally miserable year for the entire organization.
Newgarden has exactly one podium since the season-opening race, only three total top-five finishes, and one upside down flip in what may go down as the worst of his 14 years in IndyCar.
Newgarden has finished 22nd or lower in seven of 16 races and he’s on track for his lowest finish in the championship race since his 2012 rookie season, when he missed a race and finished 23rd.
"I can’t imagine it stays like this forever. Maybe it does. I don’t know," Newgarden said. "Hey, you know what? If it does, it’s been a good ride. It’s been a pretty good ride.”
He can point to the Indianapolis 500 as where the season fell apart: IndyCar in pre-qualifying inspection found that Newgarden and teammate Will Power's cars had been illegally altered and team owner Roger Penske responded by firing the top three executives at Team Penske.
The purge included team president Tim Cindric, who was Newgarden's strategist. Newgarden, who was trying to win Indy for a third consecutive year, had to start in the back and a mechanical failure led to a 22nd-place finish.
"If we don't have the 500, I don't know what this year looks like - it's like an alternate universe,” Newgarden said. "The cascade of that, to adapt, the flow of events that happened after that, you just can't predict.”
Associated Press