Josef Newgarden Scores St. Pete Triumph

Team Chevy driver Josef Newgarden opened the 2024 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season with a dominant performance in the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.

Newgarden qualified his Team Penske No. 2 Chevrolet on the pole on Saturday, then led the first 28 laps of Sunday’s race on the 1.8-mile, 14-turn temporary street circuit in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. He lost the lead during the first round of pit stops under a caution period on Lap 29, but soon regained the positions he conceded and retook the top spot just seven laps later.

Outside of briefly giving up the lead during one more pit-stop cycle, Newgarden showed the way for the rest of the race and claimed the victory by 7.912 seconds over fellow Chevrolet driver Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren.

Newgarden led 92 of the race’s 100 circuits en route to his 30th career victory.

“I had a lot of fun today,” said Newgarden, a two-time NTT INDYCAR SERIES champion. “Roger [Penske] was telling me, ‘You have a big lead. You better hold on to it and not throw it into the wall.’ I think it’s so deserving for the work [Team Penske] put in. I know intimately what’s been put into this program in the offseason. It’s Team Chevy, everything they brought this weekend, and then our team specifically, we worked really hard to close the gap. We didn’t have the speed we needed on road and street courses last year, at least on a consistency basis, and today we brought that speed. We had the execution, as always, exactly what you expect from Team Penske.”

Chevrolet claimed the top-four finishing positions at St. Pete. Behind O’Ward, Newgarden’s Team Penske teammates Scott McLaughlin and Will Power finished third and fourth, respectively. Additionally, Arrow McLaren’s Alexander Rossi came home eighth and Rinus Veekay of Ed Carpenter Racing took the 10th spot to give Team Chevy six of the top-10 positions in the final running order.

“Congratulations to Josef Newgarden and the No. 2 PPG Chevrolet team on their win in St. Petersburg,” said Jim Campbell, General Motors U.S. Vice President of Performance and Motorsports. “We’re really proud of the teamwork by Team Penske in the offseason, along with our Chevrolet engineers. It’s great to see Chevrolet drivers Pato O’Ward from Arrow McLaren and Scott McLaughlin of Team Penske sweep the podium with Josef.”

Newgarden’s victory was the ninth for Chevrolet at the St. Petersburg circuit and the 112th overall for the 2.2L direct-injected, twin-turbo V-6 Chevy engine since the beginning of the 2012 season. The podium sweep also represented the manufacturer’s 311th podium finish in the V-6 era.

With Sunday’s dominant performance, Newgarden and the entire Bowtie Brigade have already shown their strength just one race into the 2024 campaign.

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