Cindric juggling Penske drivers' title aims

Team Penske president Tim Cindric is going to earn every penny of his paycheck this week.

With all four of Penske's Chevy-powered drivers vying for the Verizon IndyCar Series championship, Cindric will need to grab a whistle and clipboard and channel his inner head coach if he wants to keep Josef Newgarden, Helio Castroneves, Simon Pagenaud, and Will Power working from the same playbook.

By the numbers, the odds favor Newgarden, the championship leader (560 points), who has Cindric on his timing stand calling race strategy. Cindric's boss, Roger Penske, plays the same role for Helio Castroneves (-22 points), who has one chance left to earn an IndyCar championship and won't be settling for second. Kyle Moyer will have an aggressive-defensive Simon Pagenaud to wrangle as the reigning champion (-36 points) looks to make a minor miracle happen and hold onto his title. And then there's Will Power, the fastest man of the season with six poles, who'll need Jon Bouslog to help with a Hail Mary (-68 points) if he's going to catch and pass Newgarden in the standings.

Even with the championship lead in hand, Newgarden can't relax, thanks to Chip Ganassi Racing's Scott Dixon (-3 points), the most prolific champion competing in IndyCar today. While Cindric can't control Dixon's advances, he will need to get buy-in from his quadruple threat to race hard without taking each other out.

If you watched the Gateway race or the most recent round at Watkins Glen, you know calming words spoken in strategy meetings often give way to the animal instincts that make the Penske Four perennial title contenders. How, then, does Cindric (pictured below) anticipate keeping his drivers from cannibalizing each other once the green flag waves over Sunday's GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma?

"It's hard to answer. No. 1, it's how realistic are everyone's chances throughout the weekend," he told RACER. "All we can do is stress how important it is for the team – overall, our sponsors and partners – that a Team Penske driver win the championship."

With double points on offer for a win this weekend (100), plus four bonus points (one for pole, one for leading a lap, two for leading the most laps), every driver in Penske's camp has a genuine chance of taking home the crown. Although Cindric does not see the need for implementing team orders, if those chances begin to slip – possibly through a poor qualifying result or issues during the early stages of the 85-lap race – for one or more of the four, they could be asked to take a supporting role.

"We all have to be honest with ourselves and be realistic as the weekend plays out," he added. "And that will determine how hard you race one another."

Cindric also notes that three of his four drivers have been down this road and know how to conduct themselves on Sunday. And for Newgarden, the youngest and least experienced member of the team, Cindric sees over-managing the 26-year-old as the wrong approach with his first championship on the line.

"I think it's a learning curve," he said. "When you see Helio's been around long enough to understand. Josef is new to the fold and learning those things. You don't want to hold a driver back while he's learning."

Although Newgarden made a short-term enemy of Pagenaud with his wheel-banging pass for the win at Gateway, and then went on to surrender most of his championship lead with an unforced error at Watkins Glen, Cindric has been impressed by his driver's mental acuity in other high-pressure situations.

"Before [Gateway], the week prior, same guy followed Will Power around Pocono and he had to calculate his chances of winning the race or creating a mess, and he did the same in [Gateway], and I think he was right in both cases," he said of Newgarden's second place behind Power at Pocono and refusal to lose in St. Louis.

"Watkins Glen, I don't know what happened; he wasn't the only one to slip there. He was going 10/10ths, and he probably gets away with it if there wasn't someone behind him to make contact with the back of our car. If Bourdais isn't behind him, we go on and finish the race where we were. You're a victim of circumstances in some situations, and in others, it's pushing a little harder, but that's what you like about him as well."

With his entire team intent on pushing as hard as possible at Sonoma, Cindric has one goal to preserve: Don't let Dixon earn his fifth championship due to friendly fire within Team Penske.