ST. PETERSBURG, Florida – It didn’t take long for Gavin Ward to engineer his way into victory lane in the NTT IndyCar Series. Ward, who took over for Brian Campe as Josef Newgarden’s race engineer at Team Penske in the offseason, helped formulate the strategy and develop the setup that powered the Hitachi Chevrolet to victory in the March 10 Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.

When longtime Team Penske General Manager Clive Howell retired at the end of last season, Team Penske made some organization restructuring. Ron Ruzewski was elevated to Managing Director, IndyCar. Campe, who had worked with Newgarden since he joined the team at the end the 2016 season, was named engineering coordinator and does not travel on the road with the team.

Ward, who joined Team Penske in early 2017 after serving as an aerodynamicist for Red Bull in Formula One and worked as an engineer with David Coulthard, Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo, assisted Campe with Newgarden’s team in 2018 as he was being groomed to take over as race engineer.

The combination had immediate success on the streets of St. Pete as Newgarden started on the pole and won the race after leading 60 laps in the 110-lap contest including the final 29 laps.

“I can’t complain,” Ward told the NTT INDYCAR App in Victory Lane. “This is what we were gunning for, this is what we were after, it was nice just to get it.”

Ward believes his driver was the difference in the 2019 NTT IndyCar Series season-opening race was the man behind the wheel of the No. 2 Chevrolet, Newgarden.

“Whenever we needed to go, he had it,” Ward explained. “Josef has got that race craft. He knows when to go and when to hold a little bit. When he got that clean air, he just nailed it and was able to drive away.

“We knew that street courses were an area where we needed to do better. We looked at parts of our car that needed improvement and parts of our performance. It is pretty satisfying to make such a big jump in competitive.”

Ward is from Bowmanville, Ontario in Canada, just down the road from the famed Mosport road course, now known as Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. He attended Oxford Brookes, consider a prestigious school for F1 engineers. He earned an internship at Red Bull Racing, and that began a near-decade long career for the Canadian in Formula One.

When in F1, Ward continued to follow the NTT IndyCar Series because it allowed more “hands-on” racing for an engineer, team and mechanic.

During the offseason, Ward and the Team Penske engineering staff developed a better understanding of the current aerodynamic package used in INDYCAR.

“It’s just details,” Ward said. “You know more about the car and when you come back a year later, you know even more. Josef also learned a lot about the car over the offseason and he showed it today.”