Josef Newgarden wins his second straight race on the streets of Long Beach

On Sunday afternoon, the NTT IndyCar Series raced the streets of Long Beach, California, for the Acura Grand Prix of Longs Beach.

Andretti Autosport w/Curb-Agajanian driver Colton Herta started the race on the pole, with Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden starting second.

The first caution came out on the sixth lap when Dalton Kellett carried too much speed heading into turn one and slammed the tire wall. He was the first car out of the race.

Meanwhile, Alexander Rossi and Felix Rosenqvist made contact, battling for the fourth position on lap 21. Four laps later, Marcus Ericsson caught Rossi and passed him for the fourth position.

On lap 29, leader Colton Herta made his first scheduled pit stop as Josef Newgarden took over the lead. Over the next three laps, Will Power led two laps, and Devlin DeFrancesco led one lap before making their pit stops. Alex Palou was the new leader; he had pitted on lap 27.

Palou led 22 laps before making his second scheduled pit stop on lap 55, and Josef Newgarden was the new leader.

On lap 56, Colton Herta was trying to catch Newgarden. However, he locked up the brakes late, heading into turn nine, and crashed, taking him out of the race. “I just broke a little bit too late. Got in there and locked the right front, and that’s it,” said Herta. “It’s just a stupid mistake. We were definitely in that thing. We were running good there in third and keeping up with Alex and Josef, so it’s unfortunate. I feel really bad.”

On lap 60, the second caution came after Simon Pagenaud when he made contact with Takuma Sato and got stuck on the flowers between turns two and three.

The race resumed with 19 laps to go. During the race, Marcus Ericsson’s car got loose off the exit of turn four, and his left rear hit the wall. Not long after hitting the wall, Scott Dixon made slight contact with Ericsson, but his car did not suffer significant damage.

Romain Grosjean passed Alex Palou for second place with fifteen laps to go and was chasing down Newgarden. Five laps later, the caution came out again for contact between Jimmie Johnson and David Malukas at turn eight.

After cleanup, the race resumed with five laps to go. Grosjean and Palou were close to Newgarden. On the last lap, Takuma Sato crashed into the tire wall at turn eight, ending the race.

Josef Newgarden won his second straight race, beating Romain Grosjean. Newgarden led 32 laps, including the last 20 laps.

“This was a fight today. This is not an easy race to win. I don’t know if it looks simple from the outside, but I was working my butt off with Grosjean in the end on the used reds (Firestone alternate tires),” said Newgarden. “I was hoping he (Romain Grosjean) would fade a little bit towards the end, but just trying to hold him off on the restart was super difficult. This Hitachi car was on it. I’ve been trying to win a race here for 11 years, so I’m so happy to get it done.”

“Very close, but not close enough,” said second-place finisher Romain Grosjean. “That was fun with the right tire strategy and with the last caution. I thought it was going to be great. He (Newgarden) did one mistake, but I just couldn’t use it.”

This weekend, Jimmie Johnson broke his left-hand during practice and still competed, finishing in 20^th place. After the race, he told Marty Snider what’s the next step. “I’m seeing a hand specialist tomorrow in North Carolina and to determine if they need to put a screw on it or not. I’m not sure what is the best pathway forward…the shortest recovery time. I’ll know more tomorrow.”

The rest of the top ten finishers were Alex Palou third, Will Power fourth, Pato O’Ward fifth, Scott Dixon sixth, Graham Rahal seventh, Alexander Rossi eighth, Helio Castroneves ninth, and Kyle Kirkwood tenth.

The NTT IndyCar Series will be off for two weeks before they head to Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday, May 1^st, at 1 pm on NBC. Tickets for the race can be purchased thanks to our friends at StubHub.