Captain's Corner: Newgarden aims for first Penske IndyCar win at Iowa

I heard a strange statistic just the other day – there is actually a track where Team Penske hasn’t won in the Verizon IndyCar Series. That takes some believing, I’ve got to admit, but it’s true.

This weekend we’re racing at Iowa Speedway, the 7/8-mile oval just outside Des Moines, and although our teammates Brad Keselowski and Ryan Blaney have driven to Victory Lane there three times for Roger Penske in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, the cards just haven’t fallen the team’s way in IndyCar.

So I think our mission this weekend is pretty clear: change that stat and make the breakthrough. I’m proud to say I go to the Iowa Corn 300 as defending winner, and it’s been a good track for me – two seconds and a win over the past three years. So my hopes are high that I can bring The Captain his first win there in my first year on the team.

What is it about that track that suits me? I don’t know for sure but I’ve thought about it a lot, and I have an idea or two. I mean, I think at short-ovals in general, I’m pretty good. The only pole position of my IndyCar career so far came at the Milwaukee Mile in 2015, for example, and that’s a race where I felt we could have challenged for the win, but the yellows didn’t fall the way we needed.

But Milwaukee is very different from Iowa – the Mile is pretty flat, Iowa is very banked – although I think there are similarities in qualifying, when you’re running on your own. In the race though, Iowa Speedway is very much about making sure your car can work in different lanes – that’s definitely been key for me in getting through traffic. Learning how to set your car up so it works on different lines, learning how to do the crossover when you’re running in the wake of another car, and learning how to move to make your car’s dirty air give problems for the guys trying to follow you.

Last year at Iowa, although we led a record number of laps in the Ed Carpenter Racing machine, it was actually a Team Penske car, Simon Pagenaud’s, that took pole position, and another Penske car, Will Power’s, that finished as our nearest challenger on raceday. I know, also, that Helio [Castroneves] and Will have had poles there. So I think with us now all being on the same team, being able to pool that knowledge is going to make us very, very strong.

Obviously I want to be the one who makes that breakthrough for The Captain, but I’m aware that it’s not going to be easy to beat my teammates – it never is! We all have strengths and weaknesses, but I think we’re all pretty good at what we do and put a lot into our programs. My old team, ECR, will have a good car too; they won’t have forgotten how to set up a car for Iowa, and one of Team Penske’s many strengths is that we respect our opposition and never, ever underestimate them. We use our knowledge of past races to build a better car, just like a driver uses his knowledge to drive better and set up his car better.

Speaking of setups, looking at the data from last year, it’s quite interesting that Will, Helio, Simon and Juan [Montoya] had quite different preferences for Iowa, whereas at most tracks this year, myself and my teammates have wanted roughly the same things from our cars.

So I think this is again going to be one of those weekends that really emphasizes the Team element of Team Penske. Setup-wise we’ll start off quite scattered across the board, and then pool our information and our setups should come closer together. As usual, my engineer Brian Campe and myself will discuss what I did in the past, what he did with Montoya in the past, and come up with what we hope is the best of both worlds.

One element to watch this weekend will be how we time our final tire changes. We’ve seen before how a late yellow can leave teams in a dilemma, regarding whether you maintain track position on old tires, or give up track position to pit for fresh tires and then try and charge through the pack.

The tricky part is that the advantage of new over old tires can vary according to whether Firestone makes little tweaks to its compounds. Going into the race, we should have a good read on how much difference it makes this year, because our Saturday final practice session begins around the same time of day as the race should be entering its closing stages on Sunday – 6.15pm local time.

I know that theoretically it’s no advantage to us when everyone gets to run at the same time and gain that knowledge, but I would rather have the tire data than not. The brain trust within Team Penske is huge, so if we get data, I’m confident that we know what to do with it, and how to react to it, better than any other team on pitroad.

So it’s safe to say I’m going into the race optimistic that we can finally get the job done for Penske at Iowa. Hope you enjoy the race.