INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA - MAY 26: Josef Newgarden, driver of the #2 Shell Powering Progress Team
Sunday's 108th running of the IndyCar Series Indianapolis 500, held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indiana, was won by Josef Newgarden from Team Penske Chevrolet. The win repeated his first-place finish from last year's event, making Newgarden the first back-to-back winner of the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing" since 2002 when Helio Castroneves accomplished the same. Pato O'Ward, with team Arrow McLaren Chevrolet, finished second, while Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi Racing Honda took the third spot on the podium.
The final laps had fans on their feet as Newgarden and Pato O'Ward dueled for the win. O'Ward moved cleanly into the lead, and then Newgarden used a brilliant last-lap pass to catch the checked flag just 0.3417 of a second in front of O'Ward.
INDIANAPOLIS, IN - MAY 26: Scott Mclaughlin of New Zealand (3) driving for Team Penske leads his
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"I'm just so proud of the team. They crushed it. I mean, crushed it. … They came here with the fastest cars. We worked our tails off," Newgarden told an NBC interviewer. While Newgarden and team owner Roger Penske were understandably elated, O'Ward was left exasperated with déjà vu—two years ago, he lost the Indy 500 on the last lap. Tears dripped down his cheeks in a post-race interview. "Just so close again. So f—— close," he said. "It's just so painful when you put so much into it." Both drivers showed mutual respect to each to each other. "Pato is an incredibly clean racer … it takes two to make that work," Newgarden remarked while in Victory Circle. "He very well could have won today."
Scott Dixon, who crossed the bricks just after Newgarden and O'Ward, told interviewers that he still had optimism even to the end. "It was pretty action-packed. At the end there, when you're kind of capturing third, you hope that the first two are going to take each other out, but obviously that didn't happen," he said.
The next IndyCar Series race is the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix in Detroit, Michigan, on June 2, 2024.
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