Photo Credit: IndyCar
At Mid-Ohio Sport Car Course for the Honda 200 Simon Pagenaud, driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Chevrolet, continued his dominance with another win, giving him four on the year.
The Montmorillon, France native suffered an injury to his back in practice on the first day at the track.
“I tell you, it’s incredible,” he said. “The doctors they did an incredible job. They were right by my side the whole weekend. I didn’t get to be debrief much with my engineer this weekend. He pretty much did everything on their own and my goal was to get as good as I could for the race.”
Despite the injury, he was able to go out in qualifying and take the pole position for the race.
“Pole position is just an advantage you are going to get at the start,” he said. So just work as hard as I can. I just think we have a really good understanding of what we need now for the red tires, for the Red Firestone tires with Ben, my engineer.
“And I think that’s why we’ve been able to be so strong in qualifying lately.”
During the race he would lead 22 laps during the race – most of which were during the first half. He would take back over the lead on Lap 85, and lead the rest the race.
“Yeah, I thought it was an incredible race, actually,” he said. “The first part of the race went really well, and you know, came out, I thought it was going to be like Toronto again. But fortunately we had to the pace to bounce back after the yellow came out.”
With the latest win, he currently leads in the standings by 58 points.
“I was calculating in my head, if I finish second to Will, I lose ten points, and that’s only 38,” he said. “You don’t know what’s going to happen in the next four races. So I thought this is my time to go because I didn’t have much to lose. It was my time to be aggressive.”
