Josef Newgarden admitted that Road America was a race that got away for Team Penske, with the young American finishing second to Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon on Sunday.
The twenty-six-year-old was just over half-a-second behind Dixon when the chequered flag fell, with team-mates Helio Castroneves, Simon Pagenaud and Will Power making it a Penske 2-3-4-5 finish, but he feels that they had the car to take the victory.
Newgarden felt that the timing of the caution periods saw Penske lose out, with the Chevrolet-powered team having locked out the top four in two of the three practice sessions and Saturday’s qualifying session around the Elkhart Lake track.
“You can’t predict (yellow flags) and I think our strategy was spot on,” said Newgarden. “We were doing what we needed to do to stay out front there all day, but you just can’t predict those yellows, and some days they fall your way and some days they don’t. Today they didn’t fall our way.
“(Scott) Dixon and the whole Ganassi team did a great job and they deserved to win with the job they did. I felt good about what we had and we had four strong Chevrolets all weekend with Team Penske.
“It stings a bit that we didn’t get the win because of how good this car was all weekend. We looked good and you couldn’t miss us. We had the fastest lap which was pretty cool and I am just proud of all our guys. Just disappointed we couldn’t get it done.”
