INDYCAR: Seat belt issues drop Josef Newgarden to last at Long Beach
by William Soquet / LASTCAR.info Staff Writer
PHOTO: Penske Entertainment via Motorsport
Josef Newgarden finished last for the 6th time in his NTT IndyCar Series career in Sunday’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach when his #2 Astemo Chevrolet finished under power, completing 88 of the race’s 90 laps.
The finish came in Newgarden’s 218th series start and was his first since the second Milwaukee race last year, four races ago.
Newgarden salvaged a dismal 2024 Milwaukee weekend, where he finished 26th and 27th, with a podium in the season finale at Nashville. This 2025 season has also been filled with highs and lows for the intense competitor. A tenth-place start at St. Petersburg turned into a third-place finish, although Penske had nowhere near the winning pace that they had last year in Florida. Newgarden and his teammates were all a bit lost at Thermal, and the #2 car qualified 17th and finished 13th in a pedestrian race. He dropped to seventh in points after the race, already a full contest’s worth of points behind Alex Palou.
The run left the team at a crossroads heading into Long Beach. Car and driver placed sixth in both practice sessions, not dominating but still ahead of Palou in both sessions. Riding the “struggle bus” during the weekend was Dale Coyne Racing. Rookie pilot Jacob Abel was last in both practice sessions, and veteran teammate Rinus VeeKay was 26th in the opening session and 18th in the second.
Despite Newgarden’s speed in practice, the weekend turned for the worse for him in qualifying. He felt impeded by Felix Rosenqvist on his fast lap and finished eighth in Group 1, although the stewards did not take action to penalize Rosenqvist. The downturn left his squad scrambling once again, reeling from a starting position of 15th.
The big story of the session was Santino Ferrucci, who was on his fast lap when his #14 car hit the wall in Turn 8 and killed all momentum on the lap, leaving him 14th in Group 2 and last on the starting grid.
The field was not bunched up at all for the drop of the green, and Ferrucci was 10.5 seconds in arrears at the start of the race. He dropped to 14 seconds back at the end of the opening lap, half a second behind Abel. A spirited charge through the field began on Lap 2, when Ferrucci made the pass on Abel for 26th. Abel was 16 seconds back at the end of the second lap, but that was when chaos began to unfold.
Technically, the last-place driver at the end of the second lap wasn’t Abel – it was Newgarden, who made the earliest dash to pit road possible to get off an alternate pair of tires that was expected to degrade very quickly. He came out of the pits roughly 45 seconds back of the leaders, but with a vast expanse of clean air.
Last place changed hands a few times during the pit cycle, as Christian Rasmussen, Louis Foster, and Devlin DeFrancesco all briefly held the position before it cycled back to Abel, who pitted on Lap 8 from 14th position.
By Lap 11, Abel was one minute behind leader Christian Lundgaard, and on Lap 19, his became the first car to go a lap down. The weekend was generally one to forget for Abel. He struggled in practice and qualifying, then suffered a collision with Colton Herta in morning warmup that sent his car into the air.
The #51 remained the last car on the track, but did unlap himself on Lap 29 as the holdouts on the alternate strategy finished their first round of pit stops. Rasmussen made a brief reappearance in last after his second pit stop on Lap 30, and then Conor Daly held the spot for a lap as his team battled fueling and suspension issues.
However, Abel’s second stop on Lap 34 pushed him down to 27th again, and with no cautions or mechanical attrition, there was really nowhere up to go. He lost a second lap on Lap 52, before his third stop of the day. Even a third pit cycle did not net Abel any positions.
Newgarden was on track for another good-not-great day, running in 12th for the majority of the first stint and 6th for the most of the second. However, the #2 car made back-to-back pit stops on Laps 60 and 61, dropping him to 25th position. This was due to the driver’s safety harness coming undone, which necessitated a full pit stop to refasten.
The troubles did not stop there. Newgarden was unable to make any progress forward from 25th and had to make yet another stop on Lap 78, dropping him into last place behind Abel. There he stayed for the conclusion of the race, simply logging laps.
The sequence of events was a bit alarming to those with attentive memories. Will Power, also a Team Penske driver, had seatbelt issues last season at Nashville, ending his championship hopes. Ron Ruzewski, the managing director for Team Penske’s IndyCar operations, later told RACER that the two scenarios were different. Power’s incident, he said, was caused by debris getting in the latch of one of the belts, causing it to unlatch. By contrast, a new seating position for Newgarden this season, combined with the extreme steering wheel input in the tight Turn 11 hairpin, caused the driver’s arm to hit the release lever, unlatching all six belts. The fact that it happened twice was curious, and it will be interesting to see if anything else comes of the story in the future.
The finish was also the latest of a dismal early season for Penske. Power was 26th at St. Petersburg to start the season, and Scott McLaughlin was last at Thermal after hybrid problems. Team Penske now sits as the leader in the LASTCAR owners championship, a rare and unenviable position for an outfit with perennial championship aspirations. In points, McLaughlin is eighth, 73 points back of the lead, Power ninth, and Newgarden tied for tenth. It will be an uphill battle for any of the three to hoist the trophy at the end of the year.
A final call goes to Ferrucci, who started last but made lemonade from his lemons. Working the primary strategy, he made it all the way up to 11th place, a net gain of 16 positions from the start of the race. It was the best result of the year for Ferrucci, a driver who had very high hopes for 2025 after he finished 10th in the 2024 standings.
LASTCAR STATISTICS
*This is the first time that all drivers in an IndyCar race have finished under power since Barber in 2022, when Tatiana Calderon finished last.
*Newgarden’s 88 laps completed tied Calderon’s lap total from that race. Max Chilton was the last driver to complete more laps on a road course and finish last, running 89 laps at Barber in 2016.
THE BOTTOM FIVE
27) #2-Josef Newgarden / 88 laps / running
26) #51-Jacob Abel / 88 laps / running
25) #76-Conor Daly / 88 laps / running
24) #30-Devlin DeFrancesco / 89 laps / running
23) #21-Christian Rasmussen / 89 laps / running
2025 LASTCAR INDYCAR SERIES OWNERS CHAMPIONSHIP
1st) Team Penske (2)
2nd) Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (1)
2025 LASTCAR INDYCAR SERIES MANUFACTURERS CHAMPIONSHIP
1st) Chevrolet (2)
2nd) Honda (1)
2025 LASTCAR INDYCAR SERIES DRIVERS CHAMPIONSHIP
