Power beaten but unbroken as runner-up

Speaking a couple of hours after his car’s clutch control unit failed mid-race at Sonoma, and he saw Team Penske teammate Simon Pagenaud drive to victory and the IndyCar title, the 2014 champ said he would be looking at the positives of 2016.

He told Motorsport.com: “Finishing second again is a bummer, yeah. But you think about some of the ways we’ve finished second before… This one doesn’t hurt so much because it was long shot, right? We gave away so many points in the first half of the year, missing the first race which I think we'd have won, and then not feeling fit for a lot of the others after that. Gave too many points away, man.

“But then that run we had in the summer was amazing. I’m still so, so pleased with that Pocono win – one of my favorite ever, I reckon. And we got four wins which is good. I’m up to 29 – same as Helio [Castroneves] and Rick [Mears] which is a pretty cool.

“I’d still say if you looked at wins-to-championship ratio, I’m a little off. I think I must have the most wins over the past six or seven years right? [He does – 25 wins in seven years. Closest is Ganassi’s Scott Dixon, with 18 over the same timespan]. But I’ve only got the one championship.

“But we’ll keep trying, man. And I’ve got to get an Indy 500. I want that so bad.”

“Simon is a very deserving champion”

Power paid tribute to Pagenaud, who he first raced against in World Series by Renault in 2005, was teamed with at Walker Racing in Champ Car in 2007, and with whom he was reunited when Team Penske expanded to four cars last year.

“You’ve got to say, Simon is a very deserving champ, no question about it,” said Power. “And I knew he would be good when he came onboard. Really solid.

“I think only Watkins Glen and Road America he struggled. Everywhere else, he just did everything pretty much right, kept racking up big points, even when he couldn’t win. And that’s how you win championships.”

As IndyCar’s most consistent pole-winner, Power also said he was impressed with Pagenaud's one lap pace. The new champion scored seven Verizon P1 awards this season, compared with Power's two.

“Yup, Simon was very good in qualifying,” he said. “I know he worked hard last winter learning to deal with oversteer and it paid off, definitely.

“Bad luck cost us pole at Detroit and GP Indy, but the others he would have been tough for me to beat in the first half of the year. I’m still not quite 100 percent, but my fitness was way out through last winter and the first three months of the season. I was still massively unfit at Barber – like by the time I got to the Fast Six, I was just physically done. And you saw it in the race there as well. I could match Simon’s lap times but I couldn’t keep it up: I was falling out of the seat by the end and Josef [Newgarden] got around me on the last lap.

“I don’t want it sound like I’m making excuses, though, because Simon was kicking everyone’s ass – me, Helio, [Scott] Dixon… Full credit to him. I’m just saying that if I’d been 100 percent fit all season, like I was in 2015, it could have made a big difference to the way this year went.

“But there’s no way you can look at what Simon did this year and say he didn’t deserve it. I always knew he had the talent to put together a season like this; he’s smart, works hard, drives fast, doesn’t make many mistakes. That’s a championship right there.”