Penske’s Josef Newgarden led an uneventful race to win his second IndyCar title at Laguna Seca race on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Nowgarden team-mate Simon Pagenaud demoted at the end of the race and passed Andretti’s Alexander Rossi for the post of vice-champion at the end of a race won by rookie Colton Herta.
Speaking after the race, American Rossi admitted he missed his mistakes in the IndyCar title fight in this season.
“Yeah, I mean, I think we minimised a lot of our mistakes last year. Ultimately I think in one way or another, we gave Scott [Dixon] a championship in 2018.” Rossi said.
“I think we didn’t do that this year. I think just Penske and the #2 car [Newgarden] specifically were stronger than us, and that’s going to happen. You can’t take away from the fact that Josef led all but one race this season. And from a sporting perspective, probably the right guy won.
“He came into this thing with a pretty big lead, and if it had gone away on double points, I would have loved it, but ultimately it probably wouldn’t have been the outcome that should have happened. Josef did a great job, Simon did a good job there at the end, and we just were a couple points short.” Rossi added.
Josef Newgarden wins 2019 IndyCar title. (Source:www.wibc.com)
Rossi added he did not have the right tyre during the race but he was able to pull back a good big deficit.
“For whatever reason, we didn’t have the tyre life that we needed. I think we were one of the better cars on blacks harder tyre and were able to pull back a pretty big deficit, even on the final stop there after that restart.” Rossi said.
“But our bed was kind of made after the first stint. It was pretty diabolical. Like I said, we wanted to take a gamble to try. It’s unfortunate that two years in a row we’re in a position to where we have to kind of roll the dice.
“I’d rather be in either leading or within more of a realistic shot so that you can do more of a normal race-type thing. But regardless, I doubt that even if we started on new reds we had the pace to win.” he added.
