INDYCAR: What did Penske learn from 2015?

Faced with a decision to retool Team Penske for 2016 or stand with the personnel that almost delivered the 2015 IndyCar championship, Penske Racing president Tim Cindric has doubled down on the assets they have in place.

"Honestly, [2016 is] the year with the most continuity that I've really experienced with any team," Cindric told RACER. "Four cars, four of the same drivers, four of the same race engineers, four of the same chief mechanics, four of the same data guys, four of the same guys calling the races. Virtually the same pit crews. The changes were very minor."

Juan Montoya's last-minute championship loss to Target Chip Ganassi Racing's Scott Dixon notwithstanding, Cindric believes the key to earning this year's title involves refinement instead of a complete reboot. Montoya earned two wins, including the Indy 500, and 2014 champion Will Power scored one victory, but the lack of wins by teammates Helio Castroneves and newcomer Simon Pagenaud suggested Team Penske was capable of achieving more than it delivered.

"Some people say, well, how do you get from 11th in points to first if you haven't changed much?" Cindric (LEFT) continued. "I'm a believer in, if it's not broke you don't need to fix it. It was hard to determine what was broken. I guess some was circumstantial, some was self-inflicted. Some of it was based on experience and chemistry. It's surprising to me where we are relative to last year, but I feel good about it."

Finding speed was not a problem for Team Penske in 2015 as Castroneves, Pagenaud, and Power accounted for 11 pole positions from 16 races. Converting those poles into victories is where the program continued to fall short, and then there were a few rounds where the Penske cars simply missed the mark. Both have become points to improve during the team's 50th anniversary season.

"Well, two things stand out, aside from the obvious of all that went wrong at Sonoma," Cindric said. "One, was Texas and the team, essentially we threw that away. We completely missed it at Texas. All of our cars were really out of contention for the most part. Texas was just down to us not executing. And Detroit wasn't our best weekend. It didn't go the way it should have gone. And then to go into Iowa and have the [suspension] failure with Juan's car like we did, those things, when you look at them in the big picture, really hurt us in the championship.

"That was counterbalanced by Scott [Dixon's] strength on the permanent road circuits. It hasn't been a strong point as far as qualifying for Juan, in particular, and we got caught out in a couple of those places and it came back to bite us. We dominated the pole positions across the board with everyone except Juan. And with Will, at the beginning of the year, we had a few troubles in the pits when it was time to get ourselves positioned for the championship and we ended up with a couple of DNFs there that really weren't his fault. It wasn't our typical year in many ways."

Asked whether the team took the wrong approach with Montoya's 2015 program - if it was too conservative - while holding the lead from the outset, Cindric believes the answer to Team Penske's issues can be solved with one key adjustment.

"The bottom line is you have to win," he said. "As far as Juan, he won two races, and it's hard to win a championship winning two races in this sport. I don't think it was a matter of being conservative; it was circumstantial in some cases and lack of execution in others. It comes back to: You have to minimize your bad days."

If Castroneves can find his way back to Victory Lane, and Pagenaud can take all he learned about the organization in 2015 and turn it into wins, Cindric is confident Team Penske will have a more predictable season.

"Helio, certainly, as you look at his career, has been in contention at least in the top five," he said. "Deals like last year where he didn't win is not typical for him. I think it's only his second season in 16 seasons that he did not win a race.

"With regard to Simon, it's quite different for him this year to where he understands how to respond to the team, and I think he will be a lot more comfortable in how to start the season and how to get off on the right foot. He had some continuity there having Ben Bretzman as his race engineer so we think that will help him through. They're trying to find each other in some ways, but also trying to understand our environment."

Coming off a two-win season in 2014 with the comparatively small Schmidt Peterson Motorsports team, Pagenaud was expected to become an instant championship contender with Penske. Cindric anticipates the Frenchman's second year in the program will mirror Montoya's year-to-year growth.

"I guess my expectations for Simon is hopefully it will be similar to Juan's transition in our world where he had a really slow start in 2014, and then, the fortunate thing was he won Pocono and was able to pick up some momentum at the end of his first year with us," he said.

"Where Simon, every time it looked like he was going to catch that momentum, it fell by the wayside for different reasons. I would expect him to have a similar reaction in his second year as far as what Juan did. He understands better how we operate. That is our expectation anyway."

Provided Penske's quartet can earn more wins and present a united front throughout the season, there's no reason for a Montoya, Power, Castroneves, or Pagenaud to miss out on the 2016 title. IndyCar's most talented four-car squad gave last year's championship away in the season's final hour, and Cindric sees no reason for it to happen again.

"I thought two or three of our cars were really on their game early on, but we didn't get it done in the end," he said. "That comes down to me and the team. Across the board, there's not one thing in particular, but there are certain things we can certainly do better this year, and I think we will."