Newgarden dominated the primary half of the 250-lap race across the 1.5-mile monitor, however following the second spherical of pitstops, O’Ward received across the #2 Penske and pulled away to a seven second lead, lapping everybody as much as and together with third-placed Romain Grosjean of Andretti Autosport.
Nonetheless, a well timed warning pulled the McLaren again into Newgarden’s sights and he was additionally capable of backtrack his automobile modifications, and overhaul O’Ward and Palou for the win.
“We had been getting beat fairly considerably in the course of the race,” stated Newgarden who scored his 26th IndyCar win and his third at Texas Motor Speedway. “I assumed originally of the race we had him tremendous coated. The automobile was good, monitor gripped up.
“I requested for some progressions on the set-up. They weren’t proper for the best way the monitor was trending. I feel Pato went the precise approach. He did the precise reverse of what I used to be doing! They had been telling me what he was asking for. We had been unhealthy within the center. He snuck again up on me. I had a giant hole. He snuck up on me, was strolling away.
“I used to be like, ‘We simply have to get via this stint and catch again up. He had such a lead at that time, it was going to be troublesome. The warning 100% introduced us again into it. We received the automobile again to the place it wanted to be. Once we had been in place, we might get the job performed…
“Ultimately he was simply pretty much as good. It might have gone both approach, in my view, between our vehicles.”
Newgarden defined that the vastly improved racing at Texas was largely all the way down to elevated downforce and the erosion of the PJ1 [traction] compound that was utilized to Turns 1 and a pair of earlier than the 2020 race.
“There’s much more load on the vehicles,” stated Newgarden. “The whole final stint, I used to be flat the entire time, flat for the primary half of the stint. It is a huge soar from final 12 months. That is positively issue primary.
“I feel issue two is simply the monitor appeared higher this 12 months… It was much less darkish within the space the place the PJ1 has been utilized. It did not appear as low grip initially as instances once we’ve been right here prior to now.
“Even when everybody tried the excessive line operating, it wasn’t such as you ventured up there simply to start out out and it is actually low grip. Just about instantly once we went up there, it was OK grip. I feel that was way more inviting for individuals to have extra downforce. We had been capable of extra efficiently apply rubber to it from our vehicles.
“I feel all of that contributed and led to the kind of racing that we had at this time.”
