Three years into his Verizon IndyCar Series career, Simon Pagenaud has championship finishes of fifth, third and fifth, and finds himself in an interesting position with his fourth season on the horizon.

The 30-year-old watched as his former teammate Will Power overcame years of hard knocks and missteps to claim his first IndyCar championship at Auto Club Speedway on August 30, and to Power’s credit, transitioning from perennial runner-up to champion only came after addressing his shortcomings on ovals. A more relaxed mindset also helped Power, who placed a greater priority on earning points than making risky moves to gain extra positions.

Like a script passed down from Power, Pagenaud finds himself on the same career arc – close, but not close enough – and knows he’ll need to follow Will’s self-improvement doctrine in order to earn his first IndyCar title.

“I think there’s a lot of parallels because our background is very similar, which is actually the same,” Pagenaud told RACER. “Now I feel like I can already win the championship. But yes, the day that I’m going to learn or grow my experience a lot more on ovals, yes, then everything will change. The championship hunt will be a lot easier.”

Power spent two years in Champ Car with Walker Racing from 2006-’07 (ABOVE), then moved to the newly unified IndyCar Series driving for KV Racing in 2008. After three years with quality organizations, he got the call to join one of the biggest programs and has thrived since then at Team Penske.

“Yes, so far I see quite a bit of resemblance, but we all have our own journey and I think Will has been with Team Penske for a while and it worked out for him really well,” Pagenaud added. “But every year he was in contention. He finished second three times, but who else can say they finished second three times in a row? Actually, if you look at the last five seasons, he’s always been up there in the top four, top three. So that’s pretty impressive. I’m very happy for him that he got the championship because I’m sure it was a difficult reputation.”

Pagenaud obviously wants to avoid the prolonged path that led to Power’s first championship. Looking at what he’s achieved while driving for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports – a team with a fraction of the resources Power has at his disposal with Penske, Pagenaud says moving up in the championship standings can be done with a few small tweaks that don’t necessarily require a Penske-sized budget.

“Personally, I put myself in tough situations sometimes that maybe I could have avoided, by being too aggressive,” he explained. “Sometimes I was over-racing, which is quite unusual for me. Sometimes I tried to get to that limit and I found it. Next year I can collect more points by avoiding situations like Detroit where Will and I hit, for example. I haven’t made many of those mistakes, but that’s one that sticks in my mind.

“There has been some mechanical problems with the brakes, specifically, but the team can’t do anything about it, it was a bit of an outside factor. We were in a good position at Houston until brake problems took us out. Quite frankly, I think the team’s done really well and we’ve rebounded well when we had difficult weekends like Sonoma. You’re building basically your database, you’re building your setups at each racetrack and you come back and it’s easier to improve. I feel like our qualifying was a lot stronger this year. Mostly, it’s been on the ovals, in qualifying, for example, where we need to step up a bit.”

Power spent three years learning with smaller teams before graduating to Penske, and after three years of starring with the giant killers at SPM, the Frenchman is weighing a similar move. Schmidt and Peterson are working hard to keep Pagenaud for 2015 and beyond, Andretti Autosport has expressed interest, and in a new twist, a previously unavailable seat at Ganassi Racing in the No. 8 NTT Data entry has opened up in the last few weeks.

Ryan Briscoe could return to the No. 8 next year, but provided the mutual interest from both sides continues and the ride is offered, it leaves Pagenaud with a big decision to make. An answer could come this week on whether he’s staying with SPM or embarking on a new journey with a next-level team. Fresh off a one-week vacation to help clear his head, Pagenaud says it’s time to set a plan in motion.

“At this point I’m contemplating what I want to do next year, and I haven’t made the decision yet,” he noted. “I’m trying to step away from racing and put everything on paper and see what is the best situation and then decide. But there’s no rush at all. I’m being pressured to give an answer, but at this point no decision has been made. There’s a lot of decisions to make. A lot of pros and cons to look at. And I will do that when I’ll make a decision and move forward and then I will say what the decision is. But at this point, there’s been interest, which is great, a great reward. And then I just need to make a decision.”​