Racing Legends TampaRacing.com Tampa Racing part 1 page 2

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Simon Pagenaud IndyCars

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PRUETT: Pagenaud’s mind games

Marshall Pruett / Images by IMS Photo, LAT

There's something different about Simon Pagenaud this year.
He's always been fast, but somehow, he's become faster. He's always been smart and calculating, but he's also managed to take that part of his craft to another level. The most obvious difference with the 32-year-old native of Poitiers, France, is his newfound ability to beat IndyCar's fiercest animals – the Will Powers and Scott Dixons – at their own game.
For the first time in his open-wheel career, Pagenaud has tapped into the ability to become scary-fast. Yes, he's still a thinker, but it's no longer a liability.
So what's behind Pagenaud's big change? Wolfing down pounds of red meat? Drink bottles filled to the brim with Red Bull? It's quite the opposite, actually.
"I do a lot of meditation!" he said with a smile. "That's been helping a lot."
The Frenchman isn't the only racer – or IndyCar driver –to use meditation to his advantage, but he might be the first to use the introspective tool to create more havoc from within the cockpit. Forget finding inner peace and calm; Pagenaud is using meditation to tap into his primal tendencies, and it's working.
He earned two pole positions in his first 85 IndyCar races from 2007-15, and after finding a new gateway to unlock his inner badass, he's taken six poles – more than any other driver – in 2016.
"I have definitely learned to embrace it more and more every year," Pagenaud said. "I have discovered throughout the years that there was this animal lying down under. It was just a matter of finding a way to unleash it when it was the right time. I used to be able to unleash it but it wasn't controlled. Now, especially since this winter, I have been able to work on it and been able to unleash it on demand."
In very basic terms, this one change has opened a new world of possibilities for Pagenaud as an IndyCar driver. He's with the same team, has the same engineer, chief mechanic, chassis, engine, tires and all the other items that were at his disposal last year.
Looking at his record in 2016, it's safe to say Pagenaud has become a complete driver after learning how to bring that animal to the forefront of his craft on command. He's tripled the number of poles, doubled his win count (he has four this year and needed five full seasons to get the first four), led more laps (330) than all of his years combined (312), and has been on the podium 47 percent of the time.
Pagenaud previously came up short to the Dixons and Powers who visited ungodly speed on their rivals at will, but that's no longer the case.
"It is a mental switch," he said. "I have just been able to control it more this year. Just by being able to control my mind better. And being able to put myself in that zone more easily, I should say. But also the car is so good everywhere, I can focus only on myself. I am not distracted by anything else, so every qualifying session I improve a little bit. I am reaching something that I couldn't reach before. Now I use it as energy."
It's the most unlikely sources of a year-to-year turnaround I've ever seen. With meditation helping Pagenaud to match the fastest IndyCar drivers lap for lap, he's put himself in a position to earn his first championship on Sunday. What a strange world we live in.