By alley - Dec 9, 2015, 3:08 PM ET

IndyCar season review: Will Power

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.

WILL POWER
2015 starts: 16
2015 best finish: 1st (IMS road course)
2015 championship position: third; 493pts

Q: Power graded his own season as a C: so much for the "once he wins a championship, he'll settle down and become unstoppable" conjecture. Did Power's mental fragility undermine his season, or did JPM's presence finally cause Will's confidence to waver?

MARSHALL PRUETT: Will Power's season was an odd blend of mystery and familiarity. Coming off his first championship victory, I expected Power to steamroll his rivals after finally putting all the pieces together in 2014. Team Penske isn't the type of place where a championship hangover would be tolerated, so his quiet run to third place stands out as a very pre-2014 season of work from Power which had a few unexpected twists added in.

He was blindingly fast throughout the year in qualifying (six poles), managed to win (once, at the Indy GP), and scored three podiums, yet went missing or suffered through a higher rate of inconsistency than one would expect from a defending series champion.

If anything, it reminded me of Power's mercurial streak of runs from 2010-2013 where it felt like he was either winning or in the wall, yet the new curveball in 2015 took those crashes (or car-damaging clashes) and turned them into a number of forgettable finishes.

Excluding the three races that ended in contact, from the 13 left to review, Power lost ground in 11 races this year. The reasons for Power's pole at St. Petersburg turning into second-place finish, or a second-place start at Mid-Ohio becoming 14th at the checkered flag, aren't all his fault, but bad luck can't be used as an excuse for failing to advance in all 11 of those 13 races.

I do think Montoya rattled Power more than he expected in the second year as teammate, but the Colombian wasn't the reason for Will's weird season. The fact is, Power has been the hardest driver to gauge in IndyCar since he became a perennial contender with Penske.

We know he has the talent to win the championship every year, yet it's only happened once in six tries with Penske. He's amassed 22 wins since stepping into the No. 12 car, and has become a threat at every circuit on the IndyCar calendar, but there's no way to predict how Power will do in any given season.

I can't wait to see how 2016 plays out for Power. If he's able to secure another championship, it will make 2015 look like a freak occurrence. If it's another sine wave of boom-or-bust results and a finish between P2-P5, it will make 2010-2013 and 2015 look normal and cast 2014 as the aberration.

Conversely, was Power's season better than it looked? He was the architect of his own downfall at Long Beach, but at all of his other awful races - Detroit 2, Fontana and Milwaukee - he was taken out by someone else.

ROBIN MILLER: By most standards, winning six poles, leading 298 laps and finishing third in the point standings is a pretty damn good year. But because of his dominance and speed since joining Team Penske, the Will Power standards are much higher. Sure, it's hard to imagine him having only one win in 2015, but between a couple bad breaks and someone else's mistakes it could have easily been multiple victories for the 2014 champion. He drove a lot better than the final results show and actually seemed at peace that he'd given it his best rather than beating himself up like he might have done a few years ago. And, he's still the man to beat at most places.

For the first time in his tenure at Penske, Power wasn't the No. 1 driver from start to finish. What does he need to do differently to reestablish himself as the alpha in a team filled with alphas?

MARK GLENDENNING: Sure, Montoya had Will covered in the points this year, but the fact that Power is still Penske's most recent champion no doubt gives him some clout within the team. And as good as Montoya's season was, maintaining his advantage for as long as he did was due in part to a couple of bits of freakish good luck: mistakes or off-song performances weren't always punished the way you'd expect them to be, purely due to circumstance. When Power had the same unfortunate breaks, whether his fault or not, they usually cost him.

That Power only scored one win was surprising, but you have to consider that in the context of how weirdly the victories were distributed right through the field this year. He won three races in 2013, but finished one place lower in the championship. By and large, I think Power is entitled to feel pretty happy about how he drove this season.

That Montoya ended up ahead of him in the points will naturally irk him a little as it would for anybody with Power's innate competitive spark, even if he knows that a lot of the gap was just down to a few breaks not falling his way. But as a team, I don't think Penske will be drilling too deeply into that over the winter. The bit that they'll be worried about is that regardless of what order Montoya and Power finished in, both of them were behind Scott Dixon.