Josef Newgarden is very content with his life as a perennial IndyCar Series contender but there are very specific NASCAR things he wants to do someday no matter how historically unrealistic it might be.
The now 35-year-old two-time IndyCar Series champion and two-time Indianapolis 500 winner is driving the pace car on Saturday in the Bristol Night Race in his native Tennessee. His NASCAR teammate, Austin Cindric, says driving the pace car around the high-banked half mile is only going to give him the itch to drive faster someday.
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As Newgarden tells it, he’s had the itch ever since coming to races as a teenager and even drove an experiential car around the track early in his career.
“I mean, if I had an opportunity to drive a Cup car, it would be here at Bristol, 100 percent,” Newgarden said before The Night Race. “Probably anything in that half a mile to a mile length; I lobe short track racing.
“That’s what I would prefer. I think Richmond would be amazing to drive and I still think we need to go to Richmond with IndyCar as well. But if I drive a Cup Series car, Bristol would be at the top of my list.”
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It would be such a tall task because Newgarden’s friends in the garage have told him it’s the worst place to make a Cup debut. But this is what he want to do more than anything in NASCAR.
“I think this takes a unique set of skills that you need to develop,” Newgarden said. “So it’s a hard track, I think, to conquer, because you see the races here and it’s so frantic.”
Newgarden is not the first driver under the Team Penske banner to say he wanted to make a one-off within a NASCAR discipline. When Will Power won the Indianapolis 500, he thought that would give him leverage to make Roger Penske budge.
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Helio Castroneves asked for years. That was a futile exercise. It didn’t happen until he left and joined Mike Shank’s team. Sam Hornish made the transition but that was after success in IRL and winning the Indianapolis 500.
Newgarden doesn’t expect it to happen under Penske’s watch, realistically.
“I have a job and a role to look after,” Newgarden said. “I mean, IndyCar racing, it’s great to be in the position that I’m in. I love my side of the sport. I would like to do more but the landscape is different than it was 30-40 years ago.”
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Newgarden said disciplines are just so much more specialized and Newgarden diverting any focus, and Penske diverting any focus away from the IndyCar Series, ultimately isn’t a justification to make it happen.
“I get paid a good amount of money to make sure I execute on race day in an Indy car for my team and to lead the team in the right direction and to keep everything in line,” Newgarden said. “And so that’s hard enough and to take away from that program. I understand the difficulty in trying to say ‘yes’ when someone says, ‘Hey, I want to go have fun and try something different.’
“At the same time, on the other side of that is I think it is also good for the sport.”
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Enter: Kyle Larson.
Ultimately, Newgarden just isn’t willing to rock the boat because he recognizes the opportunities inherent in driving in the IndyCar Series for Team Penske. It’s one of the most coveted seats in motorsports.
He’s worked his entire life to be an IndyCar Series driver and says he never once considered leaving it to do something — like NASCAR or Formula 1.
“I am so focused on our program,” Newgarden said. “I mean, genuinely I am very fortunate to be in the seat that I am. I’m having a great time. I love working with my crew. I just love it. I love showing up and getting the opportunity to go to work every weekend with the No. 2 car that I’m dealing with, and really our whole team at Team Penske on the IndyCar side.
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“I love it. I don’t see (me) doing anything else, but I’m a race car driver. Would I love to go run a Cup race? Absolutely. So that’s never going to change. Maybe at some point in the future, if things change or I wind down, maybe that will present itself. I would love to do that in the future but I don’t see when that would present itself for quite awhile.”
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