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Simon Pagenaud
Pagenaud during the Indycar Long Beach Grand Prix 2021
Nationality	French
Born	(1984-05-18)18 May 1984 (age 41) Montmorillon, France
IndyCar Series career
193 races run over 13 years
2023 position	28th
Best finish	1st (2016)
First race	2011 Indy Grand Prix of Alabama (Barber)
Last race	2023Sonsio Grand Prix at Road America (Elkhart Lake)
First win	2013Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix, Race 2 (Belle Isle)
Last win	2020Iowa IndyCar 250s, Race 1 (Iowa)
Wins Podiums Poles 15 38 13
Champ Car career
14 races run over 1 year
Years active	2007
Team	Team Australia
Best finish	8th (2007)
First race	2007 Vegas Grand Prix (Las Vegas)
Last race	2007 Gran Premio Tecate (Mexico City)
Wins Podiums Poles 0 0 0
24 Hours of Le Mans career
Years	2008–2011
Teams	Team Oreca-Matmut,Pescarolo Sport,Peugeot Sport
Best finish	2nd (2011)
Previous series
2014–2015 2010–2011 2009–2011 2008–2011 2007 2006 2005 2002,2004 2002–2003	United SportsCar Championship Intercontinental Le Mans Cup Le Mans Series American Le Mans Series Champ Car Atlantic Championship Formula Renault 3.5 Series Formula Renault 2000 Eurocup French Formula Renault
Championship titles
2016 2010 2006	IndyCar Series American Le Mans Series (LMP1) Atlantic Championship
Awards
2012	IndyCar Rookie of the Year

Simon Pierre Michel Pagenaud^[1] (French pronunciation:[pa.ʒe.no]; born 18 May 1984) is a French former professional racing driver, who last drove the No. 60 Honda forMeyer Shank Racing in the NTTIndyCar Series. After a successful career insports car racing that saw him taking the top class championship title in the2010 American Le Mans Series, he moved to theIndycar Series where he became the2016 IndyCar champion and the2019 Indianapolis 500 winner, becoming the first driver born in France to win the Indianapolis 500 sinceGaston Chevrolet in 1920 and the first polesitter to have won the race sinceHelio Castroneves in2009.^[2]

Simon Pagenaud won both the2022 24 Hours of Daytona and2023 24 Hours of Daytona withMeyer Shank Racing.

Born inMontmorillon, Pagenaud first worked at the age of fourteen in the family's supermarket, eventually managing the video game department. After he attended business school, he returned to the supermarket. His family established a driving school that provided the funds for Pagenaud to begin his racing career.^[3]

This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(August 2025)

Pagenaud competed in 2002 and 2003 in FrenchFormula Renault, and in 2002 and 2004 competed in Formula Renault Eurocup. He then moved up to theFormula Renault 3.5 Series in 2005 where he finished sixteenth. In 2006 he went to the United States and won theChamp Car Atlantic withTeam Australia in his rookie season by just a few points overGraham Rahal.

With his Atlantic championship, Pagenaud won US$2 million to apply towards a ride inChamp Car in2007. On 13 February 2007, Pagenaud and Team Australia confirmed that he would be staying with the team, moving up to the Champ Car program. Pagenaud finished eighth in the points standings in what was a very consistent debut season, with three consecutive fourth-place finishes in the Canadian rounds of the championship.

After the demise of the Champ Car World Series, Pagenaud in 2008 moved to theAmerican Le Mans Series co-driving theDe Ferran MotorsportsAcura ARX-01b LMP2 with former CART championGil de Ferran. He finished 14th in the driver's standings.

In 2009, Pagenaud and de Ferran Motorsports took huge steps forward, with the duo taking second place overall in the American Le Mans Series LMP1 class, only 17 points behind driversDavid Brabham andScott Sharp of championsHighcroft Racing. The duo of Pagenaud and de Ferran drove the ARX-01 to three wins over a total of ten races and three pole positions, turning the fastest lap of the ALMS weekend 6 times.

Also during 2009, Pagenaud drove in the prestigious24 Hours of Le Mans in LMP1 for the privateerPescarolo Sport team in the Peugeot FAP 908. The team did not finish the race, completing 210 laps. The race was won by David Brabham, driving in the factory Peugeot Sport Total No. 9 FAP 908 along with formerFormula One driversAlexander Wurz andMarc Gené.

For the 2010 ALMS season, Pagenaud moved over to the Patrón Highcroft racing team, replacing Sharp to co-drive with Brabham in the ARX-01c in LMP1 after Sharp vacated the seat to jump to the ALMS GT2 class with his own Ferrari team. Through four rounds in the 2010 ALMS series, the team of Pagenaud and Brabham lead the LMP1 class with three wins and 91 points.

Pagenaud also earned a seat driving for thePeugeot factory team in 2010 in the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans on the renownCircuit de la Sarthe in the Peugeot FAP 908 No. 3 withPedro Lamy andSébastien Bourdais.

While the No. 3 Peugeot started from pole, it retired early before nightfall after a mere 38 laps when a suspension mount sheared from the car's tub. The same fate eventually befell the No. 1 Peugeot car ofAnthony Davidson/Gene/Wurz while in second place with mere hours left to go in the race, asAudi reclaimed the 24 Hours of Le Mans title it had retained for five years before Peugeot's 2009 win.

During the race, Pagenaud found himself competing against his Highcroft Racing team which traveled to Le Mans for the first time in its history. With Brabham driving the Acura in LMP2 alongsideMarino Franchitti andMarco Werner, Highcroft maintained second through most of the race until a cooling issue sidelined the car for much of the race's final four hours.

He won the inauguralGrand Prix of Indianapolis on 10 May. This was the first time his father watched him race at the venue.

Pagenaud moved fromSchmidt Peterson Motorsports toTeam Penske in 2015.^[4] Pagenaud nearly won the2015 Indianapolis 500, leading with less than thirty laps to go and engaging most of the race in a three-way battle betweenScott Dixon andTony Kanaan. Pagenaud ended up being overtaken by the field and went on to finish tenth, while teammateJuan Pablo Montoya won the race. Pagenaud did not win a race in 2015 but renewed his deal with TEAM Penske in 2016.

Pagenaud got off to the best start of his IndyCar career with five consecutive podiums, including three wins in a row. As the season progressed, Pagenaud and his teammateWill Power became the primary contenders for the championship. With a strong run at the end of the season, Pagenaud took his first IndyCar Series championship victory, giving Team Penske another championship victory in its fiftieth year of racing. He finished the season with five race victories and a total of eight podiums.

This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(July 2019)

Pagenaud would go winless throughout 2018. Pagenaud won the Grand Prix of Indianapolis and he would also win the2019 Indianapolis 500 from pole position, the first Frenchman to do so in 99 years.^[5] Pagenaud took the championship lead fromTeam Penske teammateJosef Newgarden, however Newgarden would retake the championship lead one race later in Detroit. Pagenaud would take pole and the win at the2019 Honda Indy Toronto and took pole at the2019 Iowa 300, though the win would go to Newgarden. Pagenaud eventually finished the 2019 season in second position.

During the 2020iRacing virtual Indy 500 event, Pagenaud was accused of deliberately crashing into lead driverLando Norris, which led to him being accused of bad sportsmanship.^[6][7][8]

Pagenaud finished second in the first race of the2020 season atTexas Motor Speedway. Pagenaud finished third at the IndyGP after starting in twentieth.

Due to a fuel pump issue, Pagenaud's Iowa IndyCar 250 atIowa Speedway race 1 entry failed to make qualifying and started the race at the back of the grid in 23rd. By lap 178, Pagenaud took the lead and held on to win the 250 lap race.^[9] This would prove to be his final win in the IndyCar Series.

Pagenaud would enter2021 as a contract year. 2021 was a difficult year for Pagenaud and Team Penske in general, as the team only recorded three wins of the season with Pagenaud scoring none of them. Pagenaud's best results of the season were two third-place finishes, one at St. Petersburg and the other at the2021 Indianapolis 500.

Outside of those finishes, he would frequently be beset by poor luck and on-track confrontations with his teammates. He would finish eighth in the drivers' standings for the second year in a row. By the end of the season the racing press reported Pagenaud did not intend to re-sign with Team Penske.

After a difficult 2021 campaign, Pagenaud left the Penske team & joinedMeyer Shank Racing alongside former Penske teammate,Hélio Castroneves.^[10] Despite an encouraging start to the 2022 season which included a second-place finish at the Indy GP, the No. 60 team gradually lost competitiveness as the season continued, culminating in a fifteenth-place points finish for Pagenaud.

In 2023, Pagenaud returned to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, taking part in the LMP2 class for Cool Racing. It would be the first time Pagenaud competed in the race since 2011, where he finished second overall driving for thePeugeot Sport factory team.^[11]

During practice for the2023 Honda Indy 200 at Mid Ohio, Pagenaud suffered a crash in which his car flipped over several times and he ended up in the gravel. Pagenaud credited IndyCar's aeroscreen for saving his life in the crash. Because ofinjuries he sustained, Pagenaud was forced to sit out the rest of the season. He was replaced in the No. 60 car byConor Daly for theHonda Indy 200 and theIowa doubleheader,^[12][13]Tom Blomqvist for theHonda Indy Toronto, theBitNile.com Grand Prix of Portland, and theFirestone Grand Prix of Monterey,^[14] and2022 Indy Lights championLinus Lundqvist for theMusic City Grand Prix, theGallagher Grand Prix, and theBommarito Automotive Group 500.^[15] Both Blomqvist and Lundqvist made their IndyCar debuts filling in for Pagenaud.

Pagenaud was ultimately dropped from Meyer Shank Racing and replaced byFelix Rosenqvist for the 2024 season.^[16] Pagenaud did not return to IndyCar as his injuries from the crash at Mid-Ohio were still lingering and thus prevented him from looking for another seat.^[17]

In 2025, it was announced that Pagenaud had joined theCadillac Formula One Team as a simulator driver.^[18]

^* Season still in progress.

(key)

(key) (Races inbold indicate pole position, races initalics indicate fastest race lap)

¹ TheLas Vegas Indy 300 was abandoned afterDan Wheldon died from injuries sustained in a 15-car crash on lap 11.

Year	Team	Co-drivers	Car	Class	Laps	Pos.	Class pos.
2008	Team Oreca-Matmut	Marcel Fässler Olivier Panis	Courage-Oreca LC70-Judd	LMP1	147	DNF	DNF
2009	Pescarolo Sport	Jean-Christophe Boullion Benoît Tréluyer	Peugeot 908 HDi FAP	LMP1	210	DNF	DNF
2010	Team PeugeotTotal	Sébastien Bourdais Pedro Lamy	Peugeot 908 HDi FAP	LMP1	38	DNF	DNF
2011	Team Peugeot Total	Sébastien Bourdais Pedro Lamy	Peugeot 908	LMP1	355	2nd	2nd
2023	Cool Racing	Reshad de Gerus Vladislav Lomko	Oreca 07-Gibson	LMP2	158	DNF	DNF

¹ Driver competed for theIntercontinental Le Mans Cup, no points awarded for theAmerican Le Mans Series.

(key) (Races inbold indicate pole position)

^* Season still in progress.

¹ Driver competed for theIntercontinental Le Mans Cup, no points awarded for theLe Mans Series.

¹ Driver did not run for theIntercontinental Le Mans Cup.

+ Not Eligible for points

Thisbiography of a living personneeds additionalcitations forverification. Please help by addingreliable sources.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced orpoorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentiallylibelous. Find sources: "Simon Pagenaud" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(May 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Wikimedia Commons has media related toSimon Pagenaud.

• Official website
• IndyCar Driver Page
• Simon Pagenaud career summary at DriverDB.com
• Simon Pagenaud driver statistics at Racing-Reference
• IndyCar 36: Simon Pagenaud – IndyCar documentary

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