We can only focus on winning, says Power’s engineer

Power enters the weekend 43 points behind Team Penske-Chevrolet teammate Pagenaud. Should the 2014 Verizon IndyCar Series champion win the race and take maximum bonus points – one for pole, one for leading a lap and two for leading most laps – it would oblige Pagenaud to finish fourth. Were Power to win but without all those bonus points, Pagenaud can emerge with the championship with a fifth place finish. 

But Faustino, who first worked with Power in 2007 at Walker Racing and rejoined him at Penske in 2010, told Motorsport.com: “We just need to focus on doing the best job we can do, and that means trying to get on pole and trying to win the race. That’s the only thing that’s in our control.

“Hopefully Helio [Castroneves] can score well enough to get a Penske 1-2-3 in the championship – that’s a great target for the team as a whole. But from the #12 crew’s point of view, we just have to focus on winning. We can’t do anything else really.

“In the race, to a certain degree we’ll have to look at where Simon is running, but as we’ve seen in the past here, crazy things can happen. There are a lot of stints and a lot of stops.

“And you know, even if Simon puts it on pole and starts to run away with it, that doesn’t mean it will stay that way. Two years ago we had a nine-second lead coming to the second pitstop, and then we had a bad stop and then Will spun. So nothing’s won until the checkered flag.”

Asked about the possibility of finishing runner-up for the fourth time in seven years, Faustino said: “Yeah, that would suck. Finishing second always sucks. But it hurt more [in previous seasons] when we were leading the championship until the final round, or with two rounds to go.

“This time, to be honest, I’m grateful to be in a position where we have a decent chance in the final round. Compared with where we were after the Indy 500 – which was around 10^th place, mainly because of Will missing the first race – getting four wins and being second in the championship is a strong recovery by Will and the team.

“We’ve had some mistakes along the way, but if you look at our average finish over the past six or seven races, it’s pretty good. We needed to finish Watkins Glen, we were just trying to be solid and finish ahead of Simon. So what happened there [the clash with Ganassi’s Charlie Kimball] was crazy.

“But as a team we move on and don’t worry about what we can’t change.” 

Tire question marks again

Faustino says that, like at Watkins Glen, the teams don’t know what to expect from the softer compound, red-sidewalled tires at Sonoma Raceway today for qualifying, nor in race conditions on Sunday. The teams don’t get to run reds until qualifying begins.

He said: “Last year we took pole on the [harder] black tires, so maybe the reds won’t offer any speed advantage at all. At this stage we don’t know. We’ll see.

“It’s supposed to be hotter through the weekend, and the hotter it gets, it seems the closer the tires come in terms of laptimes.

“Firestone tweaks the compounds a little bit year to year, so you never know. I think they will be close, no major differences. At Watkins Glen, four of the cars in the Firestone Fast Six ran blacks to set their times, but that’s because physical wear was a problem, plus people were worried about not having any grip on their reds for the race.

“But actually we felt the blacks were better on our car anyway, although we didn’t expect so many others to do it too. And on raceday, we just wanted the reds out of the way." [IndyCar stipulates that both compounds are used by each car on raceday].

Asked if there could be a similar situation at Sonoma on Sunday, Faustino said: “Yeah, could be. Last year on raceday, most of the guys ran reds in the first stint and then blacks for the rest of the race.”

“Like I said, we honestly won’t know until we put them on and try them in qualifying.”