INDYCAR: The Pagenaud-Bretzman formula

The Long Beach Grand Prix added to an impressive winning record for Simon Pagenaud and race engineer Ben Bretzman. With their maiden victory for Roger Penske on Sunday, the Franco-American duo has earned the unique distinction of winning for their third different team since joining forces in 2010.

As a driver/engineer package, Pagenaud and Bretzman visited the Winner's Circle for the first time with Highcroft Racing at the Long Beach American Le Mans Series event in 2010. They added a win with their next team, the Schmidt Peterson Motorsports IndyCar operation, at Detroit in 2013 and came full circle last weekend for Team Penske at Long Beach, where their winning journey began in sports cars.

From a high-power HPD Le Mans Prototype to a pre-aero kit Honda-powered Dallara DW12 Indy car to a DW12 outfitted with Chevy's finest engine and aerodynamics, Simon and Ben have become a plug-n-play formula for success.

"He's been like a spouse since we have been together 2010," Pagenaud said with a laugh. "It has been awesome. It is funny, we really started really getting along at Mosport in 2010 when we changed our bodywork on the Highcroft car and it revealed what we needed to do on the mechanical setup of the car. I asked him to trust me on the changes and it worked out pretty good. And it started the trust and the confidence between each other. It started right there."

After working with team veteran David Brabham and IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti at Highcroft through 2009, Bretzman  says the bromance with Pagenaud happened quickly and organically.

"I was just at that point coming off with Brabs and Dario, and I really put Simon in that category of driver of guys that don't make mistakes very often, who understand the racecar, and have a passion for the racing, the history of it and everything," he said. "He doesn't crash, right? Doesn't put wheels wrong, right? You can say the same for Dario and those top guys. He builds up his knowledge base of the racetrack.

"He definitely builds up to things and understands what the car will give him, which guys like Dario would do. And his retention of everything. He can tell you what springs we ran two years ago at Houston. I don't remember and have to look through the notes, but he knows. Honda used to call him, now Chevrolet calls him the 'human data machine.' He retains all the information when he races. He's just very professional. That is probably the best word to use, professional."

From Pagenaud's perspective, Bretzman's flexibility is unique among race engineers, which could explain why the two work so well together.

"The biggest thing with Ben is how open-minded he is," the IndyCar points leader said. "To have an engineer that is so open-minded and so open to discussion is very rare. We can talk about anything; he doesn't take anything personally even though I am challenging him all the time. All he wants is to go faster, so whatever it takes to make me feel more comfortable, he doesn't care. He doesn't have a preset mind on what the car needs. He's just trying to make it the best he can for me.

"And I feel like that is why he is a very good race engineer, because he is very good at extracting the best out of the car, but he is most importantly good at extracting the best out of his driver. There is also friendship and trust. At Long Beach he wanted to go a certain way on the level of downforce. I was convinced before the weekend; I wasn't so convinced after the warm-up. And it's because of all those years I decided to follow his guts and it worked out really well."

Based on the trust they've developed since 2010, Bretzman says he's happy to place a heavier reliance on his 'human data recorder' than on the information returned by their Dallara-Chevy's onboard computers.

"We have a little bit of like an old-school approach to things," he added. "When we get to the race weekend, I'm probably 70 percent trusting whatever my driver says versus 30 percent trusting whatever the data says coming from that racecar on that race weekend. I've gone back to that approach now, using him for what he is. Knowing what he needs and trusting what he needs. You really have to trust the racecar driver and what he feels at the time and what you can get out of it, not what the squiggly [computer] lines always tell me.

"I think that is one good thing that works for us. Understanding what he needs and believing it. If he has a problem, I sit down and go over everything with him and try to understand what it is and then come to a conclusion. We probably run the longest on the tires in practice than anybody else, just because I really, really want to see how things go because you can differentiate a tire and what happens to tire wear and understand what the track does with it if a guy like Simon knows how to drive it. He's the racecar driver, I believe in him."

Seven years into their partnership, Pagenaud takes pride in the longevity they've achieved across Highcroft, SPM and Penske.

"The history we have together, it is very unusual," he said. "I don't think there are many combinations of drivers and engineers that have been together for that long in racing and are very loyal. But it is obviously our history, it is our story in racing. It is really cool. We are animated by the same things so I think I could see he was [giggling] at the podium.

"It was just because we made it work. And that is was is the most exciting in racing, when the plan goes so well and it works out and you kick everybody's butt and that is what it is all about. That is why we do this with so much heart in it."

Oddly enough, Pagenaud and Bretzman still have many years to go if they want to catch another incredibly successful driver/engineer combination—Ben's brother Eric and Target Chip Ganassi Racing's Scott Dixon, who spent more than a decade together winning championships and the Indy 500.

"Eric called to congratulate me after our win, and it was interesting, because I don't know what it is about us working with the same drivers for so long," Bretzman said. "Our personalities are different, but I think our values and our goals and how we understand people are the same. It's built from our parents. Our dad was there [at Long Beach], and I wish my brother was still engineering Dixon's car. It would make for a really fun year."