IndyCar: Can Simon Pagenaud continue his momentum in 2020?

Simon Pagenaud experienced a year of resurgence in the 2019 IndyCar season after a winless 2018. Can he keep the momentum going in 2020?

After Team Penske’s Simon Pagenaud held off Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi to win the 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May, team owner Roger Penske stated that Pagenaud would return to the team next year.

Knowing what we know now, that news shouldn’t seem like a big deal. But considering where Pagenaud was entering the 2019 season, that news becoming official was somewhat of a relief for the 35-year-old Frenchman.

Pagenaud went winless in 2018 in what was his fourth season driving for Team Penske, and he led a career-low 31 laps of the 2,281 laps he completed.

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More notably, it was his second winless season driving for Penske’s team. Meanwhile, teammates Josef Newgarden and Will Power both finished ahead of him in the championship standings with three victories each.

He entered the 2019 season on the hot seat, and early on, he didn’t do much to help his case, failing to finish in the top five in any of the season’s first four races and entering the month of May mired in 11th place in the championship standings.

That’s when the switch flipped, and the 2016 champion went on a rampage to ascend to a level where he had never previously been at any point in his career.

He drove his way to the front to win for the first time in roughly 20 months, ending a 21-race win drought, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, executing the race-winning pass on Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon with just over one lap remaining.

He shot to fourth place in the championship standings.

The following weekend, he took the pole position for the Indy 500 at the track’s oval. This pole was his first in roughly 22 months, and it ended a 27-race pole drought.

The following weekend, he led 116 of the 200 laps, the highest Indy 500 laps led total in nine years, around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) oval in Speedway, Indiana to secure his first Indy 500 victory and become the first polesitter to win the race since Helio Castroneves did it in 2009.

He now led the championship standings.

Throughout the rest of the season, Pagenaud secured two more podium finishes, including a dominant victory on the streets of Toronto. While he ultimately fell short of winning his second championship to Newgarden, he still finished in second place in the standings, marking his third top two finish in the last four seasons.

For a driver who entered the 2019 season needing a spark and for a driver who started the 2019 season completely lacking that spark, Pagenaud had quite the year, a year of resurgence.

Can he keep the momentum going in 2020?

Pagenaud will certainly have a lot to live up to in the upcoming season, and it could prove to be quite a challenge.

Repeating the success he had in the month of May in itself will be difficult, and that’s where two of his three wins came. Add in the fact that the Indy 500 is a double points-paying race, and it’s clear that his path to win a second championship is anything but straight forward.

The fact that he only finished on the podium twice outside of the month of May and once outside of his three victories will also make it challenging. His four podium finishes only tied for fifth in the series, and his one non-win podium only tied for eighth.

In a sport where consistency is key, he will need to couple his rediscovered ability to win with the consistency he showed in 2017, a season in which he recorded a career-high average finish of 5.3 despite winning only two races en route to his first runner-up finish to Newgarden in the championship standings.

He is fully capable of doing it.

Pagenaud has earned 14 victories and recorded 32 podium finishes over the course of his IndyCar career, which includes 152 starts factoring in the 2007 Champ Car season and 138 starts going back to the 2011 season when he made his IndyCar debut.

Most recently, he has made 83 starts since he began driving for Team Penske, and he has earned 10 victories and recorded 22 podium finishes during this five-year span.

Pagenaud’s bounce-back year in 2019 wasn’t simply limited to a dream month of May. His three wins, three pole positions and 268 laps led trailed only his five wins, eight pole positions and 406 laps led in his 2016 championship season following a season in which he recorded career-lows in all three categories.

Indy was only a piece of the puzzle — a big one, of course, but still nothing compared the whole body of work Pagenaud did to get back on the right track in 2019.

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Can Simon Pagenaud win another IndyCar championship or even multiple additional championships during his tenure driving for Team Penske after working himself off the hot seat? Following a year of resurgence, he will need to keep the momentum going, but he is well-positioned to do it.