Written by Archie O’Reilly
Returning to another old faithful oval, IndyCar’s season finale at the Nashville Superspeedway was a spectacular show. While Alex Palou’s championship win was all but confirmed early on, the fight for the win went down to the wire.
Here is the reaction of win-battling duo Colton Herta and Pato O’Ward, as well as third-place finisher Josef Newgarden, in the final instalment of Drivers’ View for the 2024 season…
One of Herta’s best career days
Herta, who made his IndyCar debut in the 2018 season finale and has been a mainstay from 2019 onwards, has scarcely had better days than he did on Sunday in his home state.
The California native - now a resident of Nashville - started ninth. But he quickly emerged as a serious contender for the victory on the 1.33-mile oval, returning to the calendar for the first time since the 2008 season.
Herta clinically took to the point of the field on two separate occasions across the 206 laps, including on the 202nd as he decisively and precisely dipped to the low side of laps-down Sting Ray Robb. On old tyres and an alternate strategy, O’Ward was forced to the high side of Robb, with Herta’s move to the preferred line setting him up for a late race-winning pass.
One race after his long-awaited first-ever oval podium in the second Milwaukee Mile race, it was a much-deserved maiden oval win for Herta - and a first oval victory for Andretti since 2018.
“It’s about time,” he said. “I think there’s been multiple times where I thought we could have won or should have won and numerous things would have happened to stop us from doing that. Luckily today we got it all right.
“We needed a little bit of help - I think that was in the form of a little bit of traffic to catch back up to Pato. I think it was, from my perspective, a really exciting race for it to close out like that right in the last few laps, have me battle Pato, then Josef close to battling Pato. It was a great race.”
To add to the triumph as Herta emerged from his No.26 Honda on the front stretch, adversity for Will Power and a fifth-place finish for Scott McLaughlin meant Herta rounded out the season a career-best second in the championship. He had finished 10th in 2022 and 2023.
Does this serve as a message that Herta could be a genuine factor for the title in 2025?
“I hope so,” he said. “There’s a whole bunch of things we could have done to win the championship this year. I think we’ll reflect on that, look at it going into the off-season.”
Herta did only finish outside the top 10 on four occasions - a marked upturn in consistency after nine finishes outside the top 10 (over 50 percent of races) in 2023. Compared to only a solitary podium last year, Herta has stepped up to the rostrum six times in 2024, including taking two victories after a winless 2023.
As with many drivers, there are cases of ‘what could have been’ to look back upon. But the progress is encouraging nonetheless.
“It does hurt a little bit when you think about winning the last race and [Palou] didn’t have a particularly strong one,” Herta added. “So we could have made up a lot of points today if we needed to in that championship fight. That’s something that we’ll look into in the off-season, how to shallow out the lows, make them a little bit better.”
And while unconfirmed, there is also talk that, after a failed move to Formula One due to the absence of a Super License in recent years, Herta may now be eligible. Frustrations still linger for the still-young 24-year-old.
“I mean, it would have been useful a few years ago,” he said. “It’s nice to have one, I guess. I think it’s disrespectful for IndyCar how underrepresented it is. But these are all things we know and we’ve talked about in the last three years.”
From karting to IndyCar win-fighting
Seeing Herta and O’Ward duelling for wins in the big league is a marker of potential being fulfilled. The pair’s journeys have long run together, including fighting season-long for the 2018 Indy Lights title won by O’Ward.
“You never really think about it when you’re racing go-karts, who you’re going to be racing with in the future, who might make it into professional motorsports,” Herta said. “It was cool. I’ve been racing Pato since eight, nine years old. We’ve been together a lot of our lives.
“We’re still trying to beat up on each other till this day. I hope it continues for quite a long time.”
O’Ward shared similar sentiments about fighting with his long-time competitor as the pair both bid to mount a true title challenge.
“I think it’s really cool,” the Arrow McLaren driver said. “At one point I actually thought we were going to be together in Formula 1. That didn’t work out. We’re here. “We’ve got some work to do to catch up to the No.10 car with Ganassi. I think they’ve really set the bar where they’ve been leaders in that in terms of consistency.
“Us as a team, we have a lot of work to do to be in the conversation, to be fairly honest. We’re going to work for that and try and just truly be there to fight until the end because I think this year we fell a little bit short like we have the last couple years.
“I’d love to see that take a different place next year and really give them that fight. You can never count out all the Penskes, Ganassis, hopefully a couple McLarens. Obviously Andrettis are going to be in the fight. Like 10 cars for the championship.”
O’Ward ends the season with three wins - two on track and St. Petersburg inherited - and was a matter of laps away from ousting Herta for a fourth.
“I wish I could have done it a little bit harder on him,” O’Ward said. “Sting Ray facilitated that. A bit of a stinger to lose it that way. I would have liked to have at least fight him for a little bit more. It was a pretty hectic race for our No.5 car, to be honest.”
The latest alternate-tyre experiment
For the second time, after trialling the concept at Gateway last year, IndyCar experimented with alternate tyres on an oval at Nashville. Teams had to use them on two separate occasions, unlike only once last year.
“Oh, my God, those reds at the end, I couldn’t see straight with so much vibration,” O’Ward said after a long final stint on the alternates. “Could barely talk to the team with just how much was going on in the car. Pretty gnarly in the end. I think one more lap, Josef would have gotten me for sure. I was dying.”
There were some drivers noticeably struggling on the alternate tyres, albeit the higher-degrading compound did not wear to a risky extent.
“I think it makes it fun,” Palou said. “Maybe I didn’t love that we made the experiment on the last race of the season. Having that said, it was the same for everybody. But I think it brings different strategies.
“If you go to an oval, it’s tough to pass - like here it’s tough, it’s doable but it’s tough - I think having two different compounds, it made different speeds between cars. Some people [were] degrading 10 laps before others. Then action starts to happen. People trying to be a bit smarter on strategy. I think that’s something that we need to keep or we will keep next year.”
Newgarden ready to leave 2024 behind
One of the most disappointed drivers in the field was third-place finisher Newgarden. He led the second-most laps with 54 but saw his race peter out during the penultimate stint.
“I don’t know what we made up there in the last 25 laps… maybe 12 seconds or something,” he said. “We’ll digest that next week. Going to be a tough pill to swallow but one we’re going to have to swallow… Hard to not be p**sed. Really got that wrong.”
Despite winning the Indianapolis 500 and again at Gateway, Newgarden rounds out the season eighth in the standings after eight results outside the top 15.
“It seems fitting for this year the way [Nashville] shaped up for us,” he said. “I’m going to be happy to leave all this in 2024. We’re going to reset… We’re going to come back next year and hopefully have a little different cadence. [That] would be nice.”
Major praise for the Nashville event
If it was not for Scott Borchetta, founder of primary event sponsor Big Machine Label Group, the IndyCar season could well have ended in Milwaukee.
Under previous leadership, the Nashville event was supposed to run downtown. But when Borchetta took over prior to the season and did some due-diligence initially neglected by the previous party, it came to his realisation that the event could not be run as a street race due to interference from construction on a new Tennessee Titans NFL stadium.
And so, at late notice, Borchetta was able to move the event to the relatively nearby Nashville Superspeedway. The promotion was exceptional, the racing unexpectedly excellent and there remained related events and activations downtown too.
“I just want to say again everything that Scott has done with Big Machine to make sure we maintain this event on the calendar I think was really, really important,” Tennessee native Newgarden said. “We had an incredible crowd for making the shift year over year.
“Everybody’s efforts should be applauded. We should be super thankful for what everyone has done.”
Newgarden also credited the race-ability of the track, which led to “a good show” - and one that leaves fans mourning the upcoming near-enough half-year absence of IndyCar.
“I think they did an amazing job with the event here this year,” Palou later added. “The atmosphere was amazing. We had the best driver introductions we had all year, apart of the Indy 500 obviously. The energy was up.
“I think it hopefully was a great show for the fans, what we did on track. I don’t mind finishing here next year.”
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