Josef Newgarden, Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing
The cast: Race engineer – Jeremy Milless (first season). Race strategist – Andy O’Gara. Chief mechanic – Anton Julian.
Twitter: @josefnewgarden, @CFH_Indy
The car: No. 67 Honda
The driver: Newgarden turns 24 on Dec. 22. … He’s from Hendersonville, Tenn., and resides in Indianapolis. … Newgarden didn’t start racing until he was 13 years old, in karts at New Castle (Ind.) Motorsports Park. Former Indy car driver Mark Dismore was among his instructors. … A Team USA Scholarship recipient in 2008, he went on to become the first American to win the International Formula Ford Festival (Kent Class) that December.
Season finish: Placed 13th in Verizon IndyCar Series standings – one position higher than the 2013 season (his first full season in the series). … Has made 51 starts over three seasons.
The gist: Newgarden won the 2011 Indy Lights championship and made 14 Verizon IndyCar Series starts for Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing the next season. He posted two top-10 finishes in his first four races. He did not compete in the Grand Prix of Baltimore – the penultimate race of season -- because of recent surgery to repair a broken finger (Bruno Junqueira filled in). … It was announced in late August at Sonoma Raceway, where Newgarden qualified second and finished sixth, that he had signed a new deal with the team. A week earlier, it was announced that Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing would merge with Ed Carpenter Racing to form CFH Racing for the 2015 season. … The No. 67 car will utilize Chevrolet’s 2.2-liter, twin-turbocharged V6 engine and aero kits for 2015. He tested for the first time with the Chevy engine Oct. 27 at Barber Motorsports Park.
Season stats: Newgarden tied his career-best finish of second at Iowa Speedway in mid-July – among the seven top 10s he recorded. Other top five came at Milwaukee in mid-August. … He closed the season with four consecutive top-five qualifying runs that resulted in three top-10 finishes. It could have been four-for-four at Mid-Ohio, but issue in pits during final fuel service relegated him to 12th place. … He started the season with top 10s in two (ninth after starting 22nd; eighth after starting fourth) of the first three races. … He qualified four times to compete in the Firestone Fast Six on road/street courses (starting on front row at Mid-Ohio and Sonoma). Also qualified for the Fast Nine Shootout for the 98th Indianapolis 500 Mile Race, starting eighth. … Led five races for total of 20 laps and was running at the finish in 12 of the 18 races.
Year over year: 2013 best qualifying of fifth at Baltimore (17.5 average), best finish of second at Baltimore (13.7 average). 2014 best qualifying of second at Texas and Mid-Ohio (10.8 average), best finish of second at Iowa (13.7 average).
Video: Josef Newgarden reviews his season
He said it: “I think it was a great year for us in many aspects. We had a lot of speed, showed a lot of potential. I think I’d give us a B+ from the speed side. Results-wise, I’d probably give that a C, but next year I think we’ll have the opportunity to execute better.”
The chart (below): Looking at how Newgarden finished relative to his qualifying position:
Click to download the hi-res infographic
