Long Beach IndyCar: Newgarden beats Grosjean to win, Herta shunts

Herta made a perfect start, leaving Team Penske-Chevrolet’s Newgarden to fend off Chip Ganassi Racing’s highest starter, Palou, which he succeeded in doing. Behind them, Felix Rosenqvist of Arrow McLaren SP-Chevy and Alexander Rossi (Andretti) fell in line in fourth and fifth, while the big mover at the front of the field was another Ganassi car, that of Marcus Ericsson, who muscled past Will Power’s Penske and Grosjean’s Andretti entry to take sixth.

Herta had pulled a 2.3sec lead on Newgarden by the start of Lap 6, when Dalton Kellett’s AJ Foyt Racing-Chevrolet struck the Turn 1 tirewall, bringing out the first yellow.

The Lap 10 restart was uneventful, and while Herta wanted to stay out of reach of Newgarden, he was saving fuel and happy to leave his lead at 1.6sec. Behind Newgarden, Palou was just 0.8sec adrift and by Lap 20, the reigning series champion was pulling well clear of Rosenqvist who had Rossi filling his mirrors, with Ericsson right behind the two time Long Beach winner.

Into Turn 1 on Lap 20, Rossi lunged down the inside, and when Rosenqvist attempted to turn in, he bounced off the Andretti car, allowing Ericsson and Grosjean to also slip through. Power, McLaughlin and Pagenaud would also demote the #7 Arrow McLaren SP car. Rosenqvist pitted at the end of Lap 23 to change to primaries.

One Swede’s decline triggered the other’s rejuvenation, as Ericsson went past him at Turn 6 and Grosjean passed him into Turn 1. Rossi pitted at the end of Lap 26 for primaries.

Scott Dixon, who had started 16^th and ran 15^th, had stopped as early as Lap 21 and was running very quick on the harder compound, albeit in 21^st, and his teammate Palou was the first of the front runners to stop, pulling in from third place on Lap 28. Herta stopped next time by, as did Grosjean.

McLaughlin and Rahal, the top drivers who had started on primaries, temporarily ran fifth and sixth.

Newgarden, Ericsson and McLaughlin pitted on Lap 30, and the Penske driver emerged still in second but with Palou ahead and Herta behind him.

Power and Rahal went one lap longer before pitting.

On Lap 35, with 50 to go, Palou was running 2.8sec ahead of the Newgarden vs Herta battle, while Ericsson was nine seconds further back ahead of the slightly off-strategy Dixon, Grosjean, Power, Rossi, O’Ward and Rahal. Championship leader McLaughlin had emerged ahead of Grosjean, but dropped to 20^th after tagging the wall at the hairpin and spinning. Meanwhile Pagenaud had lost time and places with a long stop and then a trip into a runoff.

Just past half distance, Herta appeared to redouble his efforts to get around Newgarden, who was now only 1.5sec behind Palou. Some 17sec from the lead, Grosjean was haunting Dixon, who would need to save fuel after his early first stop. Sure enough, Grosjean successfully made the move to claim fifth on Lap 47.

By Lap 53, the top three was stretching out, Palou leading by 2.7sec over Newgarden who had 1.5sec over Herta.

Dixon made his second stop at the end of Lap 54, the team opting for a fresh set of primaries, and teammate Palou left it only one more lap before ducking in for blacks. Power and Rossi also stopped that lap but the latter had a slow stop. Power, meanwhile, managed to emerge ahead of Dixon.

Herta was pushing hard on his in-lap, when he locked up heading into Turn 9 over the bump, and crashed hard into the outside wall. IndyCar delayed the yellow to clear Herta’s debris to allow others to stop before pitlane was closed. Newgarden ducked into the pitlane, and came out just ahead of Palou who took a look around the outside of the Penske into Turn 5, but there wasn’t a hope of that working. Over the next half a lap, Palou tried to find a way past Newgarden but couldn’t find an opening.

Then out came the caution, as Pagenaud failed to make a pass on the inside of Takuma Sato’s Dale Coyne Racing with RWR-Honda and instead mounted the roundabout at the fountain turn and landed himself in the flowers there.

The ensuing chaos caused McLaughlin and Rinus VeeKay to come together, too, but apparently without significant damage.

At the restart with 19 to go, Newgarden held off Palou, but behind them, Ericsson lost the rear of his car out of Turn 4, tagging the wall with his left rear. Grosjean and Power ducked through, but as Ericsson pulled over to the right to park it on the inside of Turn 5, Dixon ran into the back of him, which allowed O’Ward to slip past the six-time champion.

Grosjean, on alternates then tried to pass Palou for second into Turn 1 on Lap 69, but Grosjean forced him to the outside. The Andretti driver repeated the effort on Lap 70, and this time he was further ahead into the brake zone, and was able to carve across and claim second.

Grosjean immediately started applying the pressure on Newgarden, who was looking scrappy in defense, but the Frenchman ran out of push-to-pass boost. However, he would get another chance at tackling Newgarden (who had 4sec P2P left) as Jimmie Johnson’s torrid weekend finished slightly early after sliding into the Turn 8 tires, and being collected by David Malukas of Dale Coyne Racing with HMD.

The restart with four laps to go saw Grosjean try to make the pass into Turn 1, but Newgarden’s defense on the inside line was enough to rebuff him. A lap later, Newgarden used his last spurt of P2P to launch off the hairpin, and he was effectively safe for another lap.

He also remained ahead without an apparent threat from Grosjean on the penultimate lap, and then the yellow had to come out when Sato slid into the tires in Turn 8 and couldn’t restart.

And so Newgarden claimed his first Long Beach win, his second straight win, Penske-Chevrolet’s third straight, and Newgarden now grabs the lead of the championship from McLaughlin, while Palou and Power are the other two drivers over the 100-point barrier.

Cla	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap	Pits	Retirement
1	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	85	1:46'48.010		2
2	Romain Grosjean	Andretti Autosport	85	1:46'49.297	1.286	2
3	Alex Palou	Chip Ganassi Racing	85	1:46'49.769	1.759	2
4	Will Power	Team Penske	85	1:46'50.975	2.965	2
5	Patricio O'Ward	Arrow McLaren SP	85	1:46'51.722	3.712	2
6	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	85	1:46'53.070	5.060	2
7	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	85	1:46'53.403	5.393	2
8	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	85	1:46'55.318	7.308	2
9	Helio Castroneves	Meyer Shank Racing	85	1:46'56.962	8.952	2
10	Kyle Kirkwood	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	85	1:47'00.873	12.863	2
11	Felix Rosenqvist	Arrow McLaren SP	85	1:47'02.303	14.293	2
12	Conor Daly	Ed Carpenter Racing	85	1:47'03.227	15.217	2
13	Rinus van Kalmthout	Ed Carpenter Racing	85	1:47'04.256	16.246	3
14	Scott McLaughlin	Team Penske	85	1:47'05.939	17.929	3
15	Jack Harvey	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	85	1:47'06.790	18.780	2
16	Tatiana Calderon	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	84	1:47'13.075	1 Lap	3
17	Takuma Sato	Dale Coyne Racing	83	1:44'30.953	2 Laps	2
18	Christian Lundgaard	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	83	1:47'07.351	2 Laps	3
19	Simon Pagenaud	Meyer Shank Racing	81	1:47'08.738	4 Laps	3
20	Jimmie Johnson	Chip Ganassi Racing	73	1:31'54.614	12 Laps	3	Accident
21	David Malukas	Dale Coyne Racing with HMD	72	1:31'55.184	13 Laps	4	Accident
22	Marcus Ericsson	Chip Ganassi Racing	66	1:22'22.403	19 Laps	2	Accident
23	Colton Herta	Andretti Autosport	55	1:04'59.385	30 Laps	1	Accident
24	Callum Ilott	Juncos Hollinger Racing	55	1:09'33.312	30 Laps	4	Accident
25	Devlin DeFrancesco	Andretti Autosport	35	45'31.175	50 Laps	4	Accident
26	Dalton Kellett	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	5	5'58.114	80 Laps		Accident
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