INDYCAR: Pagenaud would 'love to' try NASCAR

With Simon Pagenaud's wide-ranging résumé, it should come as no surprise that the newly crowned IndyCar champion would consider adding NASCAR to his CV. The Frenchman, having been teased for years for his resemblance to "Talladega Nights" baddie Jean Girard, told the NASCAR media before Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Martinsville that he definitely hopes to add stock car racing to his experiences.

"I'm obviously pretty open-minded as a driver," he said, moments after describing Martinsville as "an incredible bullring." "I've raced sportscars, I've raced in IndyCar, obviously. I've raced rally in Europe and I'm very open-minded to any kind of racing. I think there's always something good in any sort of racing – advantage, disadvantage, different-size cars, different engine, different tires, and that makes it interesting for a driver to taste all those different things. So someday, yeah, I'd love to have the opportunity someday. Everybody asks me if I would want to drive a road course but I'd actually enjoy it more to try it on an oval."

"You'd have to relearn a lot of things, learn the racecraft, which is very different," Pagenaud said. "The drafting is also different, the way you position the car, the way you deal with your tires during a stint seems to be quite different. I always like to talk about 'Days of Thunder,' when they say the tires in NASCAR are twice as small and the car is twice as big, so like I said, a different sport but I would really much enjoy it."

"You're comparing, I always like to say, it's like playing hockey or playing football, it's a very different job for sure. "

With a championship under his belt, Pagenaud says an Indy 500 win is now high on his priority list. But for his home Le Mans race, Pagenaud said there's "unfinished business for sure."

"It haunts me every morning when I wake up – I finished second," he said, referencing the 2011 race in which his Peugeot lost out to the Audi piloted by Marcel Fassler, Andre Lotterer and Benoit Treluyer. "Right now with my priority being on IndyCar, it's out of the question for now.

"Hopefully someday."