{"id":222,"date":"2016-09-18T21:18:28","date_gmt":"2016-09-19T01:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonmotorsport.com\/?p=222"},"modified":"2016-09-18T21:18:28","modified_gmt":"2016-09-19T01:18:28","slug":"simon-pagenaud-wins-indycar-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2016\/09\/18\/simon-pagenaud-wins-indycar-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"Simon Pagenaud Wins IndyCar Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With his fifth win of the season,\u00a0<strong>Simon Pagenaud\u00a0<\/strong>is the 2016\u00a0<strong>Verizon IndyCar Series<\/strong> Champion. The French driver edged out his\u00a0<strong>Team Penske<\/strong> teammate\u00a0<strong>Will Power\u00a0<\/strong>to claim the series title.\u00a0Team Penske takes the top three places in the Verizon IndyCar Series championship. With his first victory in Sonoma, Simon Pagenaud wins IndyCar Championship<\/p>\n<h2>Simon Pagenaud Wins IndyCar Championship<\/h2>\n<h3>The Champion<\/h3>\n<p>The 32-year old Simon Pagenaud claimed his first IndyCar Series title in 2016. Pagenaud began his IndyCar career in 2011, after a successful career in the now-defunct\u00a0<strong>ChampCar World Series<\/strong>.\u00a0Pagenaud made his first charge for the IndyCar Series championship in 2013, placing third with\u00a0<strong>Schmidt Peterson Hamilton HP Motorsports<\/strong>. In 2015, Pagenaud made his move to IndyCar Series powerhouse Team Penske.\u00a0Penske had just come off of a championship winning 2014 campaign with Australian Will Power.<\/p>\n<p>Will Power finished the GoPro Grand Prix in 20th with mechanical issues. Despite the disappointment of being unable to battle for his second title, Power tipped his hat to his teammate Pagenaud. Power told NBCSN &#8220;He&#8217;s a very deserving champion&#8221;. The 2016 champion Simon Pagenaud was simultaneously emotional and calm in victory lane post-race. The French champion told NBCSN &#8220;My whole career has been about this. About today, and getting to this point, getting to this level&#8230; For an athlete, when you can perform at a 100% level like this, it&#8217;s amazing&#8221;.<\/p>\n<h3>The End of an Era<\/h3>\n<p>The end of the 2016 Verizon IndyCar Series season does not only mark the crowning of a new champion. With a new face in the history of IndyCar, another\u00a0is lost. The GoPro Grand Prix marks<a href=\"http:\/\/Pagenaud has won the title by a margin of __ points. Team Penske takes the top three places in the Verizon IndyCar Series championship. With his first victory in Sonoma, Simon Pagenaud wins IndyCar Championship\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> the last race in which Target is featured as a primary sponsor<\/a>. The team has been a longtime partner of\u00a0<strong>Chip Ganassi Racing<\/strong> and driver\u00a0<strong>Scott Dixon<\/strong>. As an iconic sponsor bids farewell to IndyCar, we celebrate the sport&#8217;s new future and the success of the 32-year old Pagenaud in a motorsport landscape that increasingly favours youth.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/607357194\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 78.451178% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/607357194?et=f0k7Xc9USPBhVxAUGTLGjw&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=NDXQLOOmFHyO_z33IZGZezokfOWsH24hsvijVFz9900=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"466\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With his fifth win of the season,\u00a0Simon Pagenaud\u00a0is the 2016\u00a0Verizon IndyCar Series Champion. The French driver edged out his\u00a0Team Penske teammate\u00a0Will Power\u00a0to claim the series title.\u00a0Team Penske takes the top three places in the Verizon IndyCar Series championship. With his first victory in Sonoma, Simon Pagenaud wins IndyCar Championship Simon Pagenaud Wins IndyCar Championship The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":284,"featured_media":223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[170,163,165,169,166,168,164,167],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-indycar","tag-gopro-grand-prix","tag-indycar","tag-indycar-series-champion","tag-scott-dixon","tag-simon-pagenaud","tag-team-penske","tag-verizon-indycar-series","tag-will-power"],"modified_by":"Christian Ryan","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}