Josef Newgarden suffered a strong accident while leading in Iowa, and Penske detected a break in the rear shock absorber of his car. However, the team still does not understand how the failure occurred
Josef Newgarden suffered a frightening accident in turn 4 at Iowa Speedway during the final round of the Indy race at the weekend - and from the broadcast footage, it was possible to see a certain amount of smoke coming out of the back of the Penske car before impact, just as the right front wheel lost contact with the ground. After the race, the team was able to determine which part failed on the American's car - but not for what reason.
"I think it's all a matter of point of view - the failure was in the right rear shock absorber," Penske president Tim Cindric revealed to the Racer portal. "That side of the car didn't even hit the wall," he stated.
▶️ Meet the GRAND PRIZE channel on Twitch by clicking here!
"Half of me wishes it was something you can say, 'this will never happen again, because something was loose. Or this, or that,'" he assessed. "Or maybe it was an old part that broke. But I have mixed thoughts, because there is nothing you can say that we could have done differently," he lamented.
Far beyond the crash itself, Penske's concern became the reason for the accident, which has not yet been identified. In Cindric's view, not knowing what might have caused the broken part on Newgarden's car is the most worrisome part of the situation - much more so than if it was due to driver error.
"And it's not a complicated part: we raced with the same design for a long time. The design didn't change with the part that failed," he said. "And the part was fine, within the mileage limitations we determined. So we sent it to a specialist to understand what happened, and we have metallurgists looking at it. It didn't have any cracks that propagated from another accident. So the reason is unknown. It's still a mystery," he finished.
With the crash while leading with less than 70 laps to go, Newgarden lost the opportunity to take the lead of Indy and was left in third place behind Ganassi's Marcus Ericsson and teammate Will Power. In a fierce battle for the class title, Scott Dixon and Pato O'Ward complete the top-5 in the standings at this point.
Indy's next stop will be the Indianapolis GP 2, which is scheduled to take place on July 30.