Josef Newgarden

Early career

Newgarden began racing at age thirteen in karts, capturing four championship titles in 2005–2006. According to an interview on The Dale Jr. Download, his first race vehicle was a motorized scooter purchased at a skate shop in Hendersonville, Tennessee. In 2001, he competed in events across the country; after a year, his father purchased a kart. At 13, his family ventured to a kart racing facility in New Castle, Indiana, launched by IndyCar driver Mark Dismore.

In his first karting year (2005), he finished second and third in the KRA Junior Can Championship and won the TAG world championship in the junior division. In 2006, he secured two KRA Junior Can championships and repeated as TAG World Champion in the junior division. He later returned to karting for the Robo-Pong 200 at New Castle Motorsports Park, winning the 200-mile endurance race twice with Dismore family members as teammates (Mark Dismore Sr in 2011 and Mark Dismore Jr in 2013).

Early formula car racing

He switched to open-wheel racing in 2006 in the Skip Barber Racing School Series, finishing runner-up in the Southern Regional Series with three wins and seven other podiums. In 2007 he finished sixth in the Skip Barber National championship with two wins, and improved to second in 2008 with three wins. After 2008, he was selected for the Team USA scholarship to compete at the Formula Ford Festival and Walter Hayes Trophy. He won the Formula Ford Festival title, becoming the only American to do so.

At the Walter Hayes Trophy, he won all qualifying races and started from pole, but crashed in wet conditions and finished sixth. In 2009, he moved to England to compete in the British Formula Ford Championship, finishing runner-up and leading the series with nine race wins. He also competed in the opening round of the 2009 Formula Palmer Audi season at Brands Hatch, taking two wins and a fourth. In 2010, he competed in the GP3 Series with Carlin Motorsport, finishing eighteenth overall with eight points, highlighted by a pole position at Hockenheimring and a season-best fifth at Monza.

Returning to the U.S. in 2011, he competed in the Indy Lights Series with Sam Schmidt Motorsports, winning his first race in the season opener on the Streets of St. Petersburg. He followed with four more wins and ten podium finishes out of thirteen races, clinching the points championship with one race remaining. At New Hampshire, he lapped the entire field and won, the first Indy Lights driver to do so since Thiago Medeiros in March 2004.

IndyCar

On December 7, 2011, Newgarden was announced as the driver for Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing. He competed in IndyCar from 2012 to 2014 with Fisher's team, earning his first podium at the 2013 race in Baltimore and a second at Iowa in 2014. In 2015, he raced under the merged team of Sarah Fisher and Ed Carpenter (CFH Racing). At Barber Motorsports Park, he earned his first IndyCar victory at the 2015 Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama, moving from fifth to second on the first lap and leading the most laps en route to a 2.2-second win.

Ed Carpenter Racing (2016)

He also won the 2015 Honda Indy Toronto and finished seventh in the standings with 431 points. In 2016, with the team again known as Ed Carpenter Racing, he started with a podium at Barber, qualified in the middle of the front row for the 2016 Indy 500, and finished third in the 100th running. At Texas Motor Speedway, he broke his hand and clavicle in a crash but returned two weeks later to finish in the top ten at Road America. Twenty-eight days after the crash, he won the 2016 Iowa Corn 300, leading 282 of 300 laps and setting a series record for most laps led in a race.

He joined Team Penske in 2017, scoring his first win with the team in his third start. He earned four wins and nine podiums in 2017, capturing his first IndyCar Series Championship. He saw a fifth-place finish in the standings with three wins in 2018. Newgarden earned his second Championship in 2019 with four wins and seven podium finishes.

During the 2020, 2021, and 2022 seasons, he produced four, two, and five wins respectively, finishing second each year. In 2023, he swept the Iowa Speedway weekend and nearly became the first driver to win every oval race on the schedule with wins at Texas and Indianapolis. After a last-lap pass, he won the 2023 Indianapolis 500 in his twelfth attempt. He finished fifth in the standings in 2023, his eighth consecutive season finishing in the top-five.

Newgarden won the 2024 Indianapolis 500, becoming the first driver in over twenty years to win the Indianapolis 500 back-to-back.

Driver profile

Since his second IndyCar season, Newgarden has been regarded as a versatile driver capable of competing on road courses, street circuits, short ovals, and superspeedways. His oval performance from 2019 onward earned him the nickname "The Oval King" after winning a significant portion of oval races.

On road and street courses he is noted for outside-line overtaking, a tactic informally called the Josef Newgarden Move. He is known to race his teammates harder than other drivers and has been at the center of infamous finishes, most notably the 2023 Indianapolis 500, where he passed Marcus Ericsson with two corners to go on the final lap, weaving briefly into the pit lane to take away clean air. The move was considered legal, but IndyCar later banned weaving into pit lane at the Indianapolis 500 for safety and sporting reasons.

Personal life

Newgarden was born at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, and named Josef to honor his mother's Danish heritage. He is the youngest of three siblings, with two older sisters. He holds a Danish passport and credits watching racing on TV with his father, an avid fan of NASCAR, IndyCar, and Formula 1, for getting him into the sport. He grew up in Hendersonville, Tennessee, attended Pope John Paul II High School, and was a classmate of NFL wide receiver Golden Tate and NASCAR driver Josh Berry.

Before racing, he played baseball, football, and basketball. On October 7, 2018, he announced his engagement to longtime girlfriend Ashley Welch; they married in Nashville in fall 2019. Their first child was born in 2022. Newgarden runs a YouTube channel featuring vlogs and behind-the-scenes content, including a discontinued series with teammate Scott McLaughlin titled Bus Bros.