IndyCar: Will Simon Pagenaud bounce back in the 2019 season?

By Asher Fair | Dec 31, 2018

SONOMA, CA - SEPTEMBER 15: Simon Pagenaud of France driver of the #22 Team Penske Chevrolet during qualifying for the Verizon IndyCar Series Sonoma Grand Prix at Sonoma Raceway on September 15, 2018 in Sonoma, California. (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images) /

Will Simon Pagenaud bounce back in the 2019 IndyCar season after going winless for the first time since 2015 in the 2018 season?

Team Penske’s Simon Pagenaud entered the 2018 IndyCar season having finished in the top two in the championship standings in both of the last two seasons. He won his first career championship in the 2016 season and finished in second place in the standings in the 2017 season behind teammate Josef Newgarden.

The 34-year-old Frenchman earned a career-high five victories in the 2016 season en route to winning the championship, and he earned another two victories in the 2017.

But Pagenaud finished in sixth place in the championship standings in the 2018 season, and he did so without winning any of the season’s 17 races. He had not previously gone a full season without winning a race since he went winless in the 2015 season.

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To be questioning whether a driver in the world’s most competitive open-wheel racing series can “bounce back” after a season during which he finished in sixth place in the championship standings may seem a bit off.

But a sixth place finish in the championship standings is uncharacteristically low for Pagenaud. Not including his lone season in Champ Car, the 2007 season, his sixth place finish in the standings in the 2018 season is the second lowest finish in the standings of his seven-year career as a full-time IndyCar driver.

Pagenaud finished in 11th place in the championship standings in what was an extremely disappointing 2015 season, which was his first season driving for Team Penske.

Other than the 2015 and 2018 seasons, Pagenaud has never finished outside of the top five in the championship standings, as he finished in fifth in the 2012 season, third in the 2013 season and fifth in the 2014 season. He drove for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports in each of these three seasons.

Having not won a race since he won the 2017 season finale at Sonoma Raceway, will Pagenaud bounce back in the 2019 season?

More than likely, the answer to that question is yes.

While he failed to win a race and finished in sixth place in the championship standings in the 2018 season and he is now on a 17-race win drought, which is the seventh longest win drought among the win droughts of the confirmed full-time drivers for the 2019 season, he still had an extremely solid and consistent season.

Pagenaud finished in the top 10 in 14 of the season’s 17 races. In one of the three races that did not result in him finishing in the top 10, the race on the streets of Long Beach, California, he was taken out from behind heading into the first turn on the race’s first lap by Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Graham Rahal. He started this race in third place.

In his 2016 championship-winning season, Pagenaud only recorded 12 top 10 finishes in 16 races. He still ended up winning the championship by 127 points (659 to 532) over teammate Will Power in second place.

What really sunk Pagenaud in the championship standings in the 2018 season was the fact that he recorded only four top five finishes throughout the season. After finishing each of the first five races in both the 2016 season and the 2017 season in the top five, he recorded his first top five finish, a second place finish in the race at Texas Motor Speedway, in the 2018 season’s ninth race.

That said, the fact that Pagenaud finished in the top 10 in 10 other races aside of the four that resulted in him finishing in the top five shows that just a slight improvement could very well get him back to the level where he can be considered a legitimate championship contender.

Expect Pagenaud to contend to win the championship once again in the 2019 season. In the first seven seasons of his IndyCar career, Pagenaud has never gone winless in two consecutive seasons. Don’t expect that to change in 2019.

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Will Simon Pagenaud bounce back in the 2019 IndyCar season? Will he earn any victories throughout the 17-race season, and if so, how many will he earn? The season is scheduled to get underway on Sunday, March 10 on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Be sure not to miss this race nor any of the other 16 races on the schedule.