Yahoo Autos Simon Pagenaud Takes First IndyCar Title With Sonoma Win
Simon Pagenaud's path to his first career IndyCar championship began nine years ago when he began his career at American Open Wheel Racing's top level alongside Team Australia teammate Will Power. He'd be out of open wheel racing when the series merged into IndyCar in 2008, and while teammate Power would continue in the discipline and find himself with Team Penske by 2009, he'd instead find himself in sports cars, landing with Indianapolis 500 champion Gil de Ferran's Honda-supported Acura prototype team in 2008. He would impress at every stop along his sojourn through sports car racing, first as Honda's ace in their HPD and Acura branded LMP2 and LMP1 racers and later as arguably the best driver in an incredible Peugeot stable in Europe that included the likes of Sebastien Bourdais and Stephane Sarrazin. His efforts with Highcroft Racing earned him particular notice, and while a planned 2011 Indianapolis 500 entry in conjunction with Dragon Racing fell through, his efforts to break through in IndyCar earned him a few relief starts with HVM Racing and Dreyer & Reinbold.
Thanks to those starts and the overwhelming endorsement of Honda, one of his partners in sports car racing, Pagenaud made his full season debut in 2012, and after finishing a winless fifth as a rookie, he'd go on to collect four wins en route to championship finishes of third and fifth over the next two years before rejoining Power at Penske Racing. 2015 was a struggle, as a championship finish of 11th stood in stark contrast to finishes of 2nd, 3rd, and 5th, but 2016 has been a revelation, recording seven poles and five wins en route to his first championship season.
Today's win was one of the most dominant of his career. Pagenaud needed to finish just fifth or better to win the title if teammate Power scored maximum points, and when Will Power slowed on track for a gearbox issue that would leave him nine laps down, the team no longer had any reason to be conservative. Now free of the worry that his teammate would jump him on strategy at the first available opportunity, the #22 Penske team ran a three-stop strategy to perfection, outrunning a quick Graham Rahal all while saving fuel en route to a win with an impressive 76 of 85 laps led.
Third Penske car Helio Castroneves would be the only leader to break to the four-stop strategy Will Power and his team planned on running, and while Castroneves made up plenty of positions (enough to take third in the championship from Josef Newgarden, one of the candidates to replace Juan Pablo Montoya as Penske's fourth driver next season) on his late charge, his ultimate finish of seventh is likely less than he would have accomplished on the primary strategy.
Graham Rahal would be Honda's top finisher in second, three seconds behind the race winner, but Andretti Autosport's strong weekend would end with finishes of fourth and fifth, respectively, for Ryan Hunter-Reay and 2017 Rookie of the Year Alexander Rossi. Hunter-Reay and sponsor DHL renewed their deal with the Michael Andretti-run team just a few hours before the race, while coveted Indianapolis 500 winner Rossi's assumed-by-many return to the team is rumored to be just one of his many options for 2017.
Josef Newgarden, the other driver coveted by just about every team on the grid, would finish sixth, and his fourth in the championship would be the best-ever for an Ed Carpenter Racing driver in what was his first season for the recently un-merged team. With radio issues plaguing 2015 champion Scott Dixon in what was sponsor Target's final race of a 27-year run with Chip Ganassi Racing, Graham Rahal's strong late season run would be enough to move him fifth in the championship, making him Honda's highest finisher for the second straight year.
The IndyCar grid will look very different when Simon Pagenaud begins his title defense at St. Petersburg next year, with changes in driver lineup possible at just about every team, but the recent confirmation of a freeze on aero kit development before the manufacturer-specific designs are phased out entirely in 2018 means that the cars themselves will look exactly the same when the series resumes on March 18th, 2017.
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