Speaking after the recent double-header races at Iowa Speedway, where he scored a brilliant brace of victories to narrow the gap to 80 points, Indy 500 winner Newgarden admitted that his team needs to do better on non-oval tracks if he is to challenge his Chip Ganassi Racing rival.
When asked if the squad had been too inconsistent on road and street courses this year, Newgarden replied: “I think that's the unknown. We have been a little bit too up and down across the board. We've talked about this before.
“It's just, yeah, I don't think we have the consistency that we want as a team. When you look at every track type, we're probably bouncing up and down a little bit too much.
“There's no doubt that the ovals, particularly the race package has been very strong for us. It's hard to complain about our race cars on ovals these days. They're very, very good.”
This weekend’s Nashville street race is on home turf for Tennessean racer Newgarden, who hails from nearby Hendersonville.
It is the final street track of the schedule, before a return to the Indianapolis Road Course, the 1.25-mile oval at Gateway, and the back-to-back west coast road courses of Portland and Laguna Seca that round out the season.
“It's a complex schedule on the way out,” he added. “We've got to do street course, road course, oval, back to two road courses, and yeah, it is a question mark.
Source: Autosport