INDYCAR: Carpenter looking to rebound in 2016

Ed Carpenter is confident that the problems that shackled him during 2015 have been solved.

IndyCar's only permanent oval specialist endured a difficult campaign last year, when he was outqualified by teammate Josef Newgarden at every oval other than Fontana. He failed to finish higher than 22nd in any of his first three races, although an upswing in form during the second half of the year delivered two top-tens, culminating in a season-best sixth at Iowa.

Carpenter believes that the his team had already started to unlock some of that lost speed toward the end of 2015, and with a solid winter's work under their belts, he is optimistic about his prospects for the new season.

"I think we all felt pretty confident at the end of the year, and we've had a really good off-season as well," he told RACER. "Really, after Texas I thought we finally got our arms around it."

Carpenter declined to go into detail about the factors that played into last year's struggles, but admitted that it was essentially a matter of the team having directed its energies in the wrong areas.

"It was a combination of things," he said when asked whether the problems related to setup .

"'Setup' can be all sorts of things. 'Configuration' is probably a better way to put it. I guess you could say we got lost, but really, we got overly focused on areas that we shouldn't have been focused on, and made everything more complicated than it needed to be.

"You just take what you learn, good and negative, and move forward. Even when we were struggling I think we learned some things that were positives; we just didn't have the right package, the right overall combination on the car. I feel like we're in a good place now."

Carpenter reverts to full owner-driver status again this year following the withdrawal of former partner Sarah Fisher and sponsor Wink Hartman. Newgarden, who joined Carpenter's team through the merger with Fisher at the end of 2014, will be the team's sole full-time driver, with Carpenter's entry still yet to be confirmed for any road or street course events. Luca Filippi stood in for Carpenter at road and street courses last year.