Simon Pagenaud: the man who would be IndyCar king

Your Mid-Ohio duel with Will was a good demonstration that you aren’t going to just cruise to the title this year. Did Roger have words with the pair of you afterward?

Well the cool thing about this team is that Roger allows us to race. When I was in a different position last year [Pagenaud finished 11^th in the championship], I was never asked to help anyone else. When I signed up, I was told, ‘You have just as much chance to win as anyone else on the race team. You have the same equipment, and we’ll give you the same number of opportunities.’

Saying that, if you want to stay on the team, you have to race smart and if you’re not in the championship, you want to help your teammate because we all work together to get to this point.

So after Mid-Ohio, Roger just called to congratulate me and said it was a really good battle. He said the journalists were asking him a few things about it, but he said it was fine, good racing. The biggest thing is for us to not crash together, but we know that. We go to that limit and don’t go any further.

And yes, it was a good battle, it was for the championship and it was nice for the fans to see.

It also proved that it’s possible to pass at Mid-Ohio at places other than Turn 4 and Turn 2. It seems that as soon as the blood runs hot, race drivers forget their misgivings and find a new limit regarding what is and isn’t possible.

Yeah, it felt like Will and I did the whole lap together!And I agree: passing is more possible than we sometimes think. At Toronto, [Scott] Dixon and I came back from 15^th and 14^th to finish eighth and ninth in the final segment.

But I think part of that is also the differences in the aerokits – Chevy to Honda, but also within the manufacturers, when different teams or drivers have chosen to run their aerokit in a different setup. Reminds me a bit of racing in sportscars.

And then the restarts too; that last one really helped. Although actually, Will and I were having a really close battle even before that, really close.

It is tough to pass, especially on a track like that because the cars are so efficient – you can brake so late – but there are setups that allow you to follow close better.

Now you’ve tested at Watkins Glen, can you compare it to a high-grip but abrasive surface like Barber Motorsports Park, or a track like Mid-Ohio which gains huge grip as rubber is laid down but actually looks after the tires quite well?

To be honest… I’ve never seen a track with as much grip as Watkins Glen! Never. It’s the first time I’ve experienced something like that. It’s in a league of its own.

It’s got quite a different feel because the corners are very long and very fast, not much braking, and as soon as you turn the steering wheel, it gets very heavy. Lots of lateral Gs, and you really have to challenge it. As soon as you turn, the car takes a set trajectory and it’s a humungous amount of Gs for the car to sustain for a long time.

Mid-Ohio is different because when you turn in there, the car slides initially before gripping up mid-corner. Barber is different because the track is grippy but the front tires never hold on that well, so you have to find ways to pivot the car. Watkins Glen, the tires are being worked from entry to exit, so as I say, it’s difficult to compare to anything else, quite frankly.

In all the debate regarding how much is too much lateral G – both in terms of driver and also component fatigue – I haven’t heard much about the amount of feel a driver has. With the cars smothered in downforce, can you feel the limit, or is it a case of blind faith each time you turn in, regarding entry speed?

Initially it’s a bit of a shocker. I’ve been on simulators and you think it’s programmed wrong, that there’s no way in reality that the car’s going to hold on at that speed. But then you get on track and you’re like – ‘Oh no, it really can be that fast! It really does stick.’ So you just have to switch your mind to a different gear and adapt. Every good driver can do this, and the best ones can deal with all types of grip. And so whatever the downforce situation, the best drivers will go to the top level.

And does the car give you less warning when it snaps away?

Yes and that’s something I’m always working on – to make the car more forgiving. For me, that is more of a priority than optimum grip. And it’s been working pretty good.

On that subject… interviewing Ben Bretzman [Pagenaud’s engineer] a couple of months back, he said that you two always look for the option that makes the car easiest to drive and then you take it to the limit. That’s different from Will and [Power’s engineer] Dave Faustino who look for what’s theoretically quickest and then it’s up to Will to deal with however the car behaves. Do you think the #22’s different philosophy is a good example of a different perspective that you’ve been able to contribute to Team Penske as a whole?

Yeah, yeah, totally agree. That’s definitely something we learned in 2015. Will has this ability to drive a car that handles in a way I’m not very comfortable with. I like a strong rear on the car, so I can brake very deep and then get back on the power soon. Will drives more on the front end of the car, so it’s a different style.

But as long as I have confidence in the car, I do things that I don’t even think possible! But I need to get that confidence before I can push those limits further. I don’t want to sound conceited but I’ve found I’m really good at that, that’s my strength. When I’m in a state of true confidence with the car, I can do things that are quite remarkable. When we came to Penske, initially I wanted to just follow the team process and learn the setup philosophy of the team. Then we saw that wasn’t the best situation for me and so we went back to our old routine and this year we’ve hit our stride in finding that level of confidence.

Does that philosophy also give you a better sense of how a car is going to behave on raceday, when you choose a car that’s more comfortable to drive over a race stint, rather than one that’s on the knife-edge for one knife-edge qualifying run?

Yeah, absolutely, and my car always trends toward a better racecar than qualifying car. And it’s funny because we actually started this season looking at race pace because we already had qualifying pace last year, especially in the second half of the season. But then we’ve found adjustments that work really well for qualifying, and we have so much knowledge now that we know what needs to be done for that ultimate qualifying lap, whatever the circuit. So working hard on race pace actually has led to us improving our qualifying performances too. They seemed to work in step with each other.  

Earlier this year, you said you didn’t like tracks with gradient changes. And then you went and took pole and victory at both Barber and Mid-Ohio and you were in the hunt at Road America. Was that just BS?

No, no! It’s true! I’m a very visual person. I like to see far, to calculate my line visually, and be very precise. And with a blind corner just past the crest of a hill or something, you can’t do this. It’s more of a guess. So Turn 9 at Mid-Ohio you turn in but can only imagine where you’re going to exit. It’s not something I particularly enjoy because it’s harder to perfect, whereas a flat corner is easier to get it to the line and flirt more with the limit of the car.

Undulations add another topic to your car balance, because when you go into a compression, you have to change your brake pressure because the compression is going to turn the car, but then you need to release the brake or you’re going to spin. So the braking point moves.

I like to do things to perfection, and undulation takes that opportunity away.

But you’ve always been pretty good at racing in the wet, and in those conditions the track is always getting wetter or getting drier – never the same from lap to lap. So you’re relying on animal instinct because the perfect braking point and the perfect moment to get back on the throttle are somewhat indefinable. How does that tally with your perfectionism?

Yes… Well, there are some contradictions in what I’m saying! I’ve been trying to improve my animal instinct, as you call it. A lot of my qualifying laps this year have been just doing it on instinct without thinking about it too much and you can only do that when your car is very, very good. You should do your thinking when you’re setting it up; when you’re in the cockpit, if the car is the way you like it, everything comes naturally.

And what you saw at the end of Mid-Ohio when I got past Will was one of those moments of using just instinct. My qualifying lap for GP of Indy was another.

Do you think your occasional rally driving – where you don’t know exactly how the surface will be around the next corner – are also helping you drive in the way where you’re just dealing with what’s immediately in front of you rather than planning a long time in advance?

Yes. Originally, dealing with whatever’s being thrown at me wasn’t one of my qualities so that has been one of my targets. Plus I enjoy the rallying, and I enjoy seeing how it helps my main job.

So every year I’m trying to correct some of my weaknesses, and improve some of my strengths.