JOSEF NEWGARDEN WON THE INDYCAR CHAMPIONSHIP

Hey ya’ll!

Welcome back to my blog!

So I’m assuming that unless you live under a rock, you watched the 2017 IndyCar season finale on Sunday where we crowed our new champion.

It was a glorious day, wasn’t it?

Beautiful day, great racing, and a wonderful new champion named Josef Newgarden.

Yup, he did it. It was wonderful and yes, I’m still reeling.

But let’s not get to ahead of ourselves.

Let’s recap, shall we?

Let’s start with qualifying on Saturday.

Going into qualifying we all knew the Penske’s were going to be strong.

It was like Road America all over again where we were betting on which Penske was going to be the fastest.

No surprise, I picked Josef Newgarden.

And then I sat in my bedroom on Saturday night and agonized for an hour while I watched qualifying.

After round one group one I thought that they should have just given Newgarden the pole right then and there.

I mean did you see that lap time?

STRAIGHT FIRE.

The rest of qualifying I was stressed.

There was the whole tire ordeal where Newgarden used both of his sets of reds in the first two rounds and most everyone else going into the fast six had a new set.

Everyone was saying he just screwed himself and I was annoyed, but still hopeful.

But then, man oh man, his last lap on used reds he blew everyone out of the water and I was freaking out.

For someone like Newgarden who had only captured one other pole in his career, two years ago, it was a pretty good time to get a pole.

So then came race day.

Based on my behavior during qualifying I was expecting myself to be full force freaking out the entire race.

But surprisingly, I wasn’t really freaking out much throughout the race, which was good.

So, let’s talk about some race highlights (and lowlights).

Alexander Rossi had a crappy day, retiring early for a mechanical issue or engine issue of some kind. Sucky end to the season for him.

I think everyone was surprised when Simon Pagenaud went off strategy and pitted earlier than everyone else (around lap 11 I believe and everyone else was around 22).

This was the one element of the race that did freak me out a times.

But, once I leaned that Pagenaud winning the race would still allow for Newgarden to win the championship I started to freak out a little less.

But I still did want Josef to win, so it was a struggle.

Part of me was thinking that he was going to run out of fuel, because you know me. I freak out at a lot of things.

Those laps where they would try to beat the other from coming out of the pits, man, I was nervous.

And during the last stint when Josef had a lot of push to pass left and he could have used it to get around Simon, but he was being conservative and didn’t: ugh, I was having a major internal struggle.

Ha, it was probably the same internal struggle that Josef was having himself.

But after It all, we all know what happened: Josef Newgarden won the 2017 IndyCar championship.

Two years ago, I was excited when Josef Newgarden has a mathematical chance to win the championship.

So, if that’s any indication to how excited I was that he actually WON the championship you can imagine how I was feeling.

Like what even.

Guys: MY FAVORITE DRIVER WON THE CHAMPIONSHIP.

Its every fan’s dream is it not?

Like I was doing some serious happy dancing.

So let’s talk about Josef Newgarden’s championship win.

Coming into this season we were all wondering If Newgarden was going to be able to get a single win with the whole big adjustment of joining a new team.

Let’s be real: before the season started we weren’t really thinking Josef Newgarden was going to win the championship. We were all just hoping he wouldn’t suck and could win a race. As a fan I was hopeful, but being realistic that’s what we all were thinking.

Man did he prove up wrong.

Josef Newgarden is the future of IndyCar.

He’s paving the way.

I think this is that start of something huge in the sport.

A young, talented, AMERICAN, champion is going to bode well.