Team Penske driver and Indycar championship leader Simon Pagenaud of France celebrates after qualifying in pole position for the GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma at the Sonoma raceway in northern California Saturday.
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Thanks to those starts and the overwhelming endorsement of Honda, one of his partners in sports vehicle 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.
Coverage of the 16th and final race of the 2016 Verizon IndyCar Series season to determine who will be presented the Astor Cup and earn a $1 million prize begins at 6:30 p.m. ET Sunday on NBCSN and the Advance Auto Parts INDYCAR Radio Network.
Capping the season with a dominating race victory, Pagenaud won his first IndyCar championship, becoming the ninth Penske driver to be crowned champion. Even with double points on the line in the season finale, Pagenaud needed only to finish in the top five to lock up the title.
Power’s problems probably would not have mattered as Pagenaud went on to win the race and his first championship.
Pagenaud has led the point standings for the entire season with Power making a late season charge for the title.
And while his last series win came Belle Isle 2 in 2014, Castroneves once again this season continued an impressive string of top-five season finishes. That would a resume addition for the Ganassi team, which is parting ways with longtime sponsor Target in IndyCar after the race.
“We found out a lot of things in the last couple of races”. Regardless of which driver wins Team Penske will be dancing on Sunday, and James Hinchcliffe will be “Dancing With The Stars” on Monday chasing the Mirror Ball Trophy.
“Obviously we always see the good days, but Gil de Ferran told me if you can have a bad day and nobody notices, that’s how you do a really good job – and that’s how you win a championship”.
But Pagenaud brought a 44-point lead into Sunday’s race and won the title comfortably.
“It’s unbelievable. I think I will realize it more tomorrow”, Pagenaud said.
A year after losing the title in the final race – Juan Pablo Montoya led the standings wire-to-wire, but a Scott Dixon win in the finale cost Penske the championship on a tie-breaker – the Penske organization cruised to the top of the series. “The whole team was a dream to work with and today was the proof of that”. We would have liked to get another win but we were struggling with the rear of the vehicle.
Im in a different position to Will Will needs to win the race to have a legit chance, really, Pagenaud said. It dropped him to sixth in the final standings.
Dixon is trying to maintain a streak of finishing third or better in the standings every year since 2007. It’s the lowest Dixon has finished since 2005.
Montoya finished third at Sonoma to bookend the year with podium finishes. It provided a bookend to the season since the Penske foursome accomplished the same feat in qualifying at the season opener, the Firestone Grand Prix of St Petersburg. Penske hopes to make a decision within 60 days on if he’ll field a fourth auto, and who will drive it, and Montoya doesn’t believe the door is closed yet on a return.
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He won’t pay attention to anything but his race, he’s said, which will require not being focused on anything being done by the competition.
