Josef Newgarden won the opener of the Harvest GP at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, taking a major chunk out of Scott Dixon’s NTT IndyCar Series championship lead with the victory Friday.
The two-time and defending series champion started second and finished more than 14 seconds ahead of Alexander Rossi with sound strategy and consistently strong laps around the 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course.
Rinus VeeKay, who started on pole position for the first time in his rookie season, was third, followed by Colton Herta and Felix Rosenqvist.
.@JosefNewgarden has gouged a whopping 32 points from Scott Dixon’s points lead with two races to go!
Newgarden will look to sweep the #HarvestGP at @IMS Saturday at 2:30P ET on @NBC. pic.twitter.com/9wy3svrVQ1
— IndyCar on NBC (@IndyCaronNBC) October 2, 2020
With his third IndyCar victory of the season, Josef Newgarden cut Dixon’s lead to 40 points with two races remaining — Saturday’s closer of the Harvest GP and the Oct. 25 season finale on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida.
Dixon had carried a 72-point lead over Newgarden into the race weekend. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver started 12th and was stuck in traffic for much of the day. He lost two spots by going off course with two laps remaining and finished ninth.
