Winners and losers from IndyCar's Nashville season finale
IndyCar

Winners and losers from IndyCar's Nashville season finale

by Jack Benyon
9 min read

Two drivers smashing into the wall from the lead, two blocking penalties and a last-minute drivethrough penalty that altered the the course of the rookie of the year race, and drama for Colton Herta's Formula 1 superlicence hopes: IndyCar's Nashville season finale had everything.

Side-by-side racing on an oval is always a welcome sight and Nashville always delivers a spectacle.

And as the final race of the season, it was always going to decide a huge number of season-long battles - which was always going to leave us with plenty of winners and losers.

Winner: Josef Newgarden

With this result alone, Josef Newgarden went from 16th to 12th in the final points standings.

It's hardly what he wanted to be fighting for in 2025, but he's had so much ill-fortune, and so many big results taken away from him, that ending the season with a victory that ensures his 11-year streak of winning at least one race each season continues - which is the least he deserves.

He had to fight back from not being the top Penske car in qualifying but that is often the way with Newgarden on ovals; his magic comes from his ability to work in traffic and home in on a set-up with mid-race changes that bring his car to life.

He looked beaten after the final stop, when he was undercut, but he got a rare stroke of luck when team-mate and leader Scott McLaughlin brushed the wall and lost momentum.

"I’m glad Josef won because I would have got a kick up the ass," joked McLaughlin after his error, although an ailing Penske still ended the year with a 1-3, with, you guessed it, runaway champion Alex Palou splitting Newgarden and McLaughlin in second.

Palou's car just wasn't good enough in traffic to win, despite leading for some time, and his save from a puncture earlier in the race might be one of the most breathtaking pieces of car control you'll see - as the car effectively rocked on two wheels into the pits and he hit his marks perfectly.

Loser: Christian Rasmussen

Won last week at Milwaukee but started 25th after he was demoted from 16th for an engine grid penalty, and crashed in dirty air with no contact on the first lap.

Winner: Louis Foster

It was a dramatic race for Rahal Letterman Lanigan's Louis Foster, who sealed the rookie of the year title but had a crash, a blocking penalty, and needed his rival to make a mistake in the closing laps.

Foster's crash came early in the race when he moved aggressively from the low line to the high one entering Turn 1 - which is what he got his blocking penalty for on David Malukas - before Malukas, who was running second, tried to go around the outside and hit Foster's front right wheel.

Between one and three laps down for the rest of the race after the contact and penalty, Foster was trundling around hoping for a miracle to clinch the rookie of the year crown and he got one - as Robert Shwartzman, running in ninth at the time, also got a blocking penalty for baulking Santino Ferrucci.

It meant the title was decided by two points in Foster's favour.

"Our main goal was to win rookie of the year," said Foster after the race.

"We need to execute better on Sundays. Once we do that, we'll be a serious team to reckon with."

Loser: Robert Shwartzman

Shwartzman fell from ninth to 14th with that late penalty, having had the measure of Foster and his RLL team all weekend.

After finishing behind Foster at the Indianapolis 500, Shwartzman still won the top rookie award owing to his amazing pole position, but he'll have to spend the next seven months ruing his block on Ferrucci as that cost him the season-long rookie honours.

He ended up 24th in the points, one spot behind Foster.

Loser: David Malukas

We’re happy Malukas is OK after he was airlifted to hospital following the shunt with Foster, as he was later released with clear test results.

Foster initiated the issue before the crash by moving up the track, but in that scenario, and while running second in the race, Malukas really needed to back out. When he hit Foster, Foster was right on the bottom of the track and could move no further down.

Without Foster moving up the track, this crash likely doesn't happen. But as the driver running second in the race and auditioning for a Penske drive, Malukas really needed to sense the danger and let this one go for self-preservation.

A disappointing end to a good run of form in the second part of the season.

Losers: Pato O'Ward and McLaren

Pato O'Ward dominated this race from pole before what he called a front-right tyre failure put him in the wall.

Luckily, he sealed second in the championship last week - but his DNF inflated the gap to Palou in the final standings to 196 points.

Elsewhere for McLaren, Christian Lundgaard retired with an as-yet-undiagnosed failure. "It's a race of survival, and we didn't [survive]," he summarised bluntly.

Nolan Siegel finished 17th in the race (from seventh on the grid), and 22nd in the points for the year. He can be regarded as extremely lucky the two Prema cars are not eligible for IndyCar's leaders' circle points and cash as it would have been a very close-run thing with them and Foster, who Siegel jumped back ahead of with his result. Without penalties, Foster and Shwartzman would both likely have beaten Siegel.

Rumours about Siegel's future in the team were doing the rounds at Nashville but McLaren has already confirmed Siegel for next year. Regardless, it'll have to be a much better season than this one.

Winner: Kyffin Simpson

Since his ace podium at Toronto in mid-July, Kyffin Simpson has been relatively quiet, but he delivered a best oval qualifying (eighth) and result (fourth) at Nashville.

If he can be in the top 10 regularly, along with the sponsorship he brings, he'd be the perfect third driver for Ganassi alongside Palou and Scott Dixon.

The highlight of the race here was a multi-lap, side-by-side duel with McLaughlin. The latter's praise told you everything you need to know about how perceptions of Simpson are shifting.

"I have to give massive props to Kyffin Simpson," said McLaughlin. "Probably the best oval race I've had. Felt like 2006 or something. Pinned around the outside, [Simpson] gave me some room. If he came up, I was in the fence hard. Big props to Kyff. Really, really happy to race him."

Loser: Colton Herta

Rumours swirl around Herta potentially switching to Formula 2 next year to chase an F1 superlicence, but in the here and now that pursuit got harder as he lost a place in the championship to finish seventh.

That means he has 36 superlicence points, losing a point by dropping a place in the IndyCar standings.

One point probably isn't the biggest deal in the grand scheme of things and Herta's Rick Astley-inspired social video certainly points to Herta not worrying too much about his future.

He won this race last year but could only qualify 13th this time. At mid-race he looked in contention for a top-five finish but fizzled out late on with an unsafe release penalty to end up 11th.

Winner: Conor Daly

Conor Daly is an absolute menace on ovals. At Nashville, he went from 24th to fifth largely just through overtaking people on restarts like he always does.

You wonder what he'd do in a Penske or McLaren-run car on an oval, as he's absolutely among the best in the series in the discipline.

You can point to previous years, where his road and street course performances have let him down, and that has been backed up this year. But he has given Juncos Hollinger its biggest ever points total in IndyCar (268) eclipsing Callum Ilott's tally from 2023 (266).

Daly deserves another shot next year.

Loser: Marcus Armstrong

Marcus Armstrong entered the weekend tied for sixth in the points, but 19th at Nashville dropped him to eighth in the final standings.

That's a big shame for a driver with 11 top-10 finishes in 17 races this year. IndyCar rewards that kind of consistency less than scoring some headline results, with the Meyer Shank Racing driver on the podium only once this year.

Here, he made a mistake by missing his marks in the pits that dropped him back, and then a late blocking penalty really screwed a day where he ran legitimately in third place at one stage.

So he's a 'loser' this weekend, but a season-long 'winner', for sure.

Winner: Felix Rosenqvist

Instead, sixth in the standings went to Armstrong's team-mate Felix Rosenqvist, who was ninth overall entering the weekend but seventh in the race allowed him to jump some ailing rivals.

He started ninth but was issued a penalty for a jump start, and had to fight back from 26th. An early final stop was a masterstroke from the #60 Meyer Shank crew and it got its reward, with a highest-ever championship finish thanks to this result.

In fact, even Armstrong's eighth in the points would have bettered the team's top IndyCar finish so far (12th last year with Rosenqvist), so what a year it’s been for the Ganassi-affiliated team.

Both drivers will stay on at Shank next year, although Armstrong remains contracted to Ganassi.

Winner: Callum Ilott

Four top 10s in the last five races point to Ilott's ability and Prema's improvement as a rookie team.

Ilott spent most of the season trailing his team-mate Shwartzman, but has done one thing a lot of drivers don't and backed up his word - that his performances had been better than his results showed, and that those results would come in the second half of the season.

No one could have guessed Prema's best performances would come on ovals this year, but they generally have, and a ninth here for Ilott from 18th on the grid was a typically sensible drive from him.

When he was younger, Ilott had a reputation for being a sometimes rash, blisteringly quick but occasionally inconsistent driver. He's blossomed into a really safe pair of hands with all of the upside still in IndyCar.

Loser: Will Power

Will Power was in the podium places when he overshot his marks at a pitstop and then had gear-selection issues trying to get restarted. Then, on a race restart, he was slow to get going and dropped to the back of the field.

He was pinned laps down as a result and could not recover.

That was typical of his season really, although most of his issues have been out of his control - even if this wasn't the cleanest race from Power.

He headed into a meeting with Roger Penske after the race to find out if he still has a job. We'll likely know in a few days what the outcome is and if it will be Malukas or Power in the #12 next year.

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