IndyCar: 2019 a season of resurgence for Simon Pagenaud

After a winless 2018 IndyCar season, the 2019 season has been a season of resurgence for 2016 champion Simon Pagenaud of Team Penske.

IndyCar is a “what have you done for me lately?” sport. So after Team Penske’s Simon Pagenaud finished in sixth place in the championship standings as the team’s lowest placed driver last year and failed to win a race, he justifiably entered the 2019 season on the hot seat.

A few races into the 17-race season, he worked his way off that hot seat, and he has been in the midst of a season of resurgence ever since.

The 35-year-old Frenchman is currently in his fifth consecutive season driving for the team after signing with them ahead of the 2015 season.

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After a disappointing maiden season driving for Team Penske in 2015 that resulted in him failing to win a race and finishing in 11th place in the championship standings, Pagenaud won the 2016 championship by a whopping 127 points (659 to 532) over teammate Will Power after earning a career-high five victories.

Pagenaud finished in second place in the championship standings behind new teammate Josef Newgarden in the 2017 season with two victories before his disappointing 2018 season made him the most prominent subject of replacement rumors.

Through the season’s first four races, Pagenaud had not helped his case. He failed to finish a single race in the top five and entered the month of May in 11th place in the championship standings.

But the following race marked a turning point.

Pagenaud drove his way through the field late in the race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in the rain. With less than two laps to go, he took the lead from Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon before going on to pull away and win to end his 21-race win drought. He launched himself up to fourth place in the championship standings with this victory.

One week later, he ended his 27-race pole position drought and took the pole for the 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval.

The following week, he led 116 of the laps in this 200-lap race around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) oval in Speedway, Indiana en route to holding off Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi by just 0.2086 seconds to win the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” for the first time in his career. He launched himself to the lead of the championship standings with this double points-paying victory.

After this race, team owner Roger Penske ended the Pagenaud replacement rumors, stating that he would be back with the team in the 2020 season.

In the seven races that have taken place since Pagenaud’s Indy 500 victory, he has added another victory, as he won the race on the streets of Toronto at Exhibition Place in mid-July, and he has only finished outside of the top nine on one occasion.

He is very much in contention to win his second career championship, as he sits in third place in the championship standings. He trails teammate Josef Newgarden for the lead by 47 points (504 to 457), and he sits just 31 points behind Rossi in second (488 to 457).

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After a disappointing 2018 IndyCar season for Simon Pagenaud, he has shown everybody that he still has what it takes to compete at a championship level in American’s top open-wheel racing series. In what has been a 2019 season of resurgence for the newly crowned Indy 500 champion, he has proven that there is no need for his name to be tied to any replacement rumors for the foreseeable future.