Pagenaud hopes 2018 Indy 500 is less of a "chess game"

The 2016 IndyCar champion was arguably the fastest of the Penske drivers on race day at the Indy 500 in both 2015 and 16, but says he still welcomes the new car and any change that puts more emphasis on the driver at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. 

The planned IMS oval tests for this week have been pushed back to the end of April due to expected inclement weather.

“For now I just don’t know, but I think if it’s more down to the driver, I’m happier,” Pagenaud told Motorsport.com. “If you do a good job and have a good car, you want to be able to extract the best out of it and go for it.

“Personally I will prefer it to be less reliant on draft, because then you can choose your level of downforce, and it’s a little more dependent on what you feel your car can do. Lately, at Indy we’ve just been stacking downforce on as much as we could because we knew that however quick your car is, you can’t get away from the pack.

“It was more a game of defense and protection than a game of attack, which I thought was a bit of a shame. You were basically just positioning yourself to stay in the lead pack until the end of the race and then it was more of a chess game than a driving game in my opinion.

“Some people were very good at it – like [2017 winner Takuma] Sato – and others were not, and you have to respect that. Whatever the formula is, you have to be the best at it. Whatever you get given, it is what it is and you have to try to be the best.”

Some drivers have expressed concerns that tighter control over the 2018-era cars means that in qualifying a driver may run out of tools to adjust the car, and there will therefore be less differentiation between the most daring drivers and their more timid rivals. However, Pagenaud said that shouldn’t be a problem.

“I think the cars will be a lot harder to drive, so you’re more prone to make mistakes,” he commented, “so it’s a better formula in that sense. I think there is still so much you can change in terms of suspension geometry, springs, dampers, cambers, alignment…

"So there’s still room for making the car better for yourself, and for finding whatever is going to make it more comfortable for you to be on the edge more than the others.”