Josef Newgarden aiming to climb standings in final race

Josef Newgarden is looking to climb to third in the standings at the IndyCar season finale at Sonoma this weekend.

The Tennessee native currently sits fifth in the standings with one win to his name in 2016, but he is hoping that he will be able to challenge for the race victory in California to vault him up the table.

"We're trying to go into the off-season with a strong outing," Newgarden told RACER. "Everyone on the Ed Carpenter Racing team wants it, everyone at Fuzzy's Vodka wants it, and I know I want it."

"We got one win this year at Iowa, we're coming off of a second at Watkins Glen, and we just want to have a good final race at Sonoma. Getting another win and getting ourselves up to third in points is the way we want to end the season."

Although the potential of a third place finish presenting the prospect of Ed Carpenter Racing's best ever finish in the points, Newgarden is disappointed to have not figured in the championship battle.

"We want to be in the championship battle," he said. "There are moments where I feel like we were close to being in it for the finale, but it didn't work out that way, so we're concentrating on going as far as we can, and that's third right behind Will [Power] and Simon [Pagenaud]."