Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden in the No.2 PPG Chevrolet put on a master class in the PPG375 at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday.
The Tennessee native, who started the race from P4 battled all race long with Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward but managed to keep the Mexican behind him to claim his third career Texas win.
Newgarden’s victory was so impressive that he lapped everyone up to eighth place and speaking following the action he said:
“Great car. I don’t know what else to say other than our car was fast. That’s what made the difference. I sort of owe tuned it middle of the race. Pato ran up on us, got by us, was walking away. We got the tuning back, which was great. Reversed everything that I asked for. Got it into a happy window and were in position at the end. Team Chevy, PPG, a great weekend for us, great team effort. We’re on the board. We are on the board. We were not on the board leaving St. Pete. We’re on the board now.”
Scott McLaughlin in the No.3 XPEL Chevrolet came through the field from 15th to finish the race on the lead lap in sixth place and speaking following the action the New Zealander said:
“Overall pretty good day for the XPEL Chevy to move from 15th to sixth and that’s no mean feat. We actually went back to like 20th running at the start so really proud of the team. We had a one bad pit stop. I made a couple of mistakes in the race so that wasn’t a perfect day but to still come back and salvage the sixth place, big props to the team and my car and my team and my engineer, Benny. So I feel really good going into the next Speedway.
Fresh from announcing a new contract with Team Penske, defending series champion Will Power in the No.12 Verizon 5G Chevrolet started the race from eighth place and made solid progress in the early stages.
On lap 195 of 250, Power was forced to serve a drive through for a pit miscue and finished the race in 16th as a result.
Ron (Ruzewski) and I were just talking about the day. Yeah, I think we probably could have got a top 10 out of our Verizon 5G Chevy. We didn’t do that in part because of the drive through penalty for a mistake in the pits. It wasn’t as bad as I thought. I expected it to be way worse than 16th. Yeah. Good regroup. Go on to Long Beach y’all”