By alley - Nov 20, 2015, 3:02 PM ET

IndyCar season review: Simon Pagenaud

What will you remember the 2015 IndyCar season for? Juan Pablo Montoya's teflon coating wearing off right at the time he needed it most? The introduction of the aero kits, several years after they were first mooted? Rocky Moran Jr.'s inspiring hour of track time at Long Beach?

To try to make sense of it all, RACER's Marshall Pruett, Robin Miller and Mark Glendenning asked each other some searching questions about all of 2015's regulars, which for the purpose of this review, includes anyone who started a minimum of half the races. Look for new installments every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

SIMON PAGENAUD
2015 starts: 16
2015 best finish: 3rd (Detroit; Saturday race, Mid-Ohio)
2015 championship position: 11th; 384pts

Pagenaud is putting on a brave face about the fact that his move to Penske coincided with his worst-ever season in IndyCar. Was it really just a blip?

ROBIN MILLER: Since I picked Pagenaud to win the 2015 IndyCar title, it's obvious I may be the wrong person to answer this question. But it was shocking he only had a pair of podiums while finishing 11th in the point standings. With longtime engineer Ben Bretzman by his side on the best team in IndyCar history, we figured at least two or three wins. And it wasn't like they didn't have speed because he qualified in the Top 5 12 out of 16 times and led 132 laps – mostly on ovals which aren't his forte. The season trend was that the Friendly Frog became the Fading Frog – running up front and fast early before falling back. So that's why it was just a blip and Pagenaud will be a championship factor in 2016.

Some drivers thrive as part of the big machine, while others thrive at smaller, built-around-me teams. Did Simon misjudge his strengths by leaving a comfy home like SPM for the cutthroat environment at Penske?

MARK GLENDENNING: It's waaaaay too early to jump to any conclusion like that. At worst, Pagenaud might have misjudged how much would be involved in making the transition, and even that's probably a stretch. Simon's a smart guy, and you'd have to think that Roger Penske and Tim Cindric would have made the realities of life at Penske very clear to him when he first signed.

Simon must have known that moving from a smaller team where he was the main focus to a huge machine where he has to assert himself in a group packed with personalities as huge as Will Power, Juan Pablo Montoya and Helio Castroneves was going to be a challenge, and so it proved.

And it's not just about being alpha, it's the details, too. It's having all the extra data available to you, but working out which bits will actually make you faster and which ones will send you down the wrong road. He claimed to have a handle on that by mid-season, but even so, there must have been a bit of trial and error early on.

You also have to wonder how his focus changed towards the end of the year once it became clear that he wasn't going to be a factor in the title fight. He told me in Iowa that he was treating most of the remaining races as test sessions in preparation for a stronger 2016, but also, one suspects Pagenaud's modified approach helped the team as it worked to get either Montoya or Power over the line in the championship battle.

Would he have had a better season had he stayed at Schmidt? Probably. But if his ultimate ambition was to join one of the powerhouses then he had to learn these lessons sooner or later. Might as well get them out of the way now. The experience of 2015 will have added a few new tools to his kit for next year, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he can do with them.

If Simon had it to do over again, would he have found more success by joining Ganassi, or possibly his friend and mentor Sebastien Bourdais at KVSH?

MARSHALL PRUETT: That's a great question. If we had to pick one of the two, yes, I think he might have been a greater threat at KVSH for the simple fact that it's a smaller team - like the one he left at the end of 2014 - and he might have a stronger individual emphasis placed on his needs. Plus, Bourdais was instrumental in Simon's move to America and has been like a slightly older brother for years. As a tandem, they would be fearsome.

Leaving SPM's tailored program for an incredible opportunity with Roger Penske would be the right move for Simon in any situation, and having his trusted engineer Ben Bretzman follow was also a smart call.

I don't think Pagenaud was 100 percent ready to go from being an only child at SPM to the middle child at Team Penske; returning for a second season with Roger should only improve the situation, but I do think he would have thrived more in a smaller team like KV - or by staying at SPM - in 2015.

We know he's a rocket, and he's now a steadier threat on ovals, so once he figures out how to get the best out of himself in a bigger team filled with three teammates who are cut from the same hunter/killer cloth, I expect we'll see Pagenaud return to form.