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Newgarden Wins at WWT Gateway for His Sixth TimeJoe Skibinski
With rain on the forecast in the St. Louis area, IndyCar moved its lone Sunday night race at WWT Raceway up 20 minutes to try to beat the storms. Three hours and two red flags later, the king of the short oval, Josef Newgarden, would leave victorious for the second time in 2026 and sixth time in 11 races at the track.
The first red flag came for raindrops while the field was under caution shortly after passing the halfway mark, where the race would be official if it could not be safely restarted. At the time of the first red flag, Marcus Ericsson was leading. Ericsson led a career-high 114 laps in the race and ultimately finished second as he tried to shorten the gap to Newgarden in the closing laps after passing Christian Rasmussen for second.
"It's definitely bittersweet after leading that many laps, having a great car underneath me," Ericsson said in the post-race press conference. "We drove all the way to the front, was feeling really good up front. Josef is good around these tracks. He got track position on us at one of the stops. Yeah, it's just hard to get around him. Bittersweet, but the Honda was great all night. Thought I drove really well. A good result for us. But yeah, of course you want that win when you're that close to it."
The second red flag came out with the Chip Ganassi Racing drivers Scott Dixon and Alex Palou out front. The two had committed to using their fuel as much as possible to regain a chance at a win after a poor qualifying spot for Dixon and early contact between Palou and the McLaren of Nolan Segal.
Dixon was about to drive down pit row when raindrops started to be reported. He stayed out to hold onto the lead but was on fumes. The race was red-flagged, and when it resumed, Dixon needed to take emergency service to his No. 9 Honda under yellow, and he was hit with a drive-through penalty. Palou was heading down pit row with the rest of the field when he ran out of fuel and needed to inch his way to the very first pit stall after securing his first pole position at the track, more than a second faster than the field across their two-lap average in qualifying the day before.
Palou made it but lost two laps in his slow crawl, pipping him out of contention for a win or podium. This was Palou's second-worst finish of the year, following his DNF at the other short oval already completed off the calendar, Phoenix Raceway.
Rasmussen passed Newgarden for the lead with 47 laps to go following the final restart. Rasmussen started behind his Ed Carpenter teammate, Alexander Rossi, who was running a lap down in 18th. It turns out Newgarden had the wrong intel on the ECR drivers and thought Rossi was on the lead lap and Rasmussen one back. The Penske driver was confused as to why Rasmussen was fighting so hard to get a lap back, not knowing that the five-lap battle was for position. Newgarden learned this when he saw Rasmussen on the podium.
"I don't know what was going on there, but I knew I was going back by him," Newgarden told Fox Sports. "I don't know what he was doing."
Rasmussen finished third after starting 17th, looking in contention for his second career IndyCar victory during his battle with Newgarden. His podium finish was aided by his unique line choice through the closing laps. Rasmussen ran the corners higher than the leaders since it was the only place his car felt like it would perform on par.
"That's what the car was giving me the whole race," Rasmussen explained. "I tried to run down low starting the race. Man, the car was just so tight that I couldn't turn. I got chewed up like by everyone out of turn two."
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