Josef Newgarden came to the defence of his own actions after a chaotic end to an action-packed race at Gateway.
The American claimed another IndyCar victory, despite a spin and a red flag caused by a restart to the race that he was leading. Three cars were caught up in the mayhem behind him, as Alexander Rossi was launched over the top of Newgarden’s teammate Will Power.
Both found themselves in the wall, followed by Romain Grosjean who had a messy race for the Juncos Hollinger Racing team.
Discussing the restarts after the race, Newgarden pointed to a problem with IndyCar’s regulations that might have been the root cause of the chaos.
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Josef Newgarden believes IndyCar has restart ‘problem’
Power was angry enough at the time to pin the blame on Newgarden, making an inappropriate gesture as his teammate circled past him.
IndyCar launched an investigation after the race to see whether he had broken any restart rules and determine whether a penalty was necessary.
However, he was cleared of any wrongdoing and defended his actions after the race while speaking to the media, via Motorsport Week.
“I was trying to go as late as I could. Sometimes people go really early, sometimes they go in the middle, sometimes they go kind of late, and sometimes they go really late,” said Newgarden.
“It’s not that different of a restart I’ve done before. I’ve done a lot of restarts from the front. It’s not that different from other restarts that have gone late.
“I don’t know that I’d change much. If anyone, especially on our team, wants to look at the data, you’re going to see a very consistent speed.
“What it looked like to me, when stopped on the red I saw the replay, what looked like happened is it went green momentarily before I went, just momentarily. I’m talking like half a second or a second.
“If it’s just that slight difference in timing, if race control goes green and I haven’t gone yet for just a second, I think people were trying to jump, which we’ve had a problem with, to be honest. We’ve had a problem with jump-starts for the last two years. It’s a constant topic in the driver meeting.”
Why was Will Power so annoyed with the Gateway incident?
The late drama, which wiped Will Power out from the running and left him 18th in the final classification of the race, has huge championship implications.
The 43-year-old lost 17 points compared to championship leader Alex Palou, making his aspirations for a third IndyCar crown even more unlikely.
Having led a whopping 117 laps, which is nearly half of the race, he would have expected to come away from the event with more points to show for his efforts – but IndyCar’s jump-starting ‘problem’ saw his race end prematurely as his rivals fought to gain an early advantage.
There isn’t long before he has time to make up for the misfortune though, with another race coming straight away at the Grand Prix of Portland next week.
Power will need the assistance of his Team Penske teammate Newgarden if he is to make any serious push to steal the title from Alex Palou’s grasp at the front.