It didn't take long for Simon Pagenaud to be sold on the move of the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix from it's cozy home out on Belle Isle back to the streets of Detroit for 2023.
"When I landed at the airport this week to come to the race, the first thing the lady at the rental car center said was, 'Good luck this weekend,'" Pagenaud said. "That doesn't happen often. I thought, 'wow.' I said, 'Are you going to the race?' She said. 'I'm trying. It's going to be so much fun downtown.'
"I was shocked at that. It just shows that IndyCar is on the rise. To see that people are actually aware of what's happening means the promotion is being done very well. So, that gets me excited. We want to be relevant with what we do."
Pagenaud, the 2016 IndyCar Series champion, had some success on Belle Isle, winning there in 2013 (his first IndyCar win) for Team Penske and finishing runner-up in 2016. While he's had his difficulties this year with Meyer Shank Racing—Pagenaud is just 25th in the NTT IndyCar Series standings—he's a sneaky pick to be in the mix for the win this year in Detroit.
Pagenaud qualified his Honda a season-best eighth for the race, and he was quickest in the Sunday morning final practice before the race. He had a good feeling this might be a good race for him after spending a lot of time in April on the simulator.
"On the simulator, it seemed like kind of my specialty," Pagenaud said. "Ninety-degree corners is exactly what I'm good at, so I'm pretty excited.
"Belle Isle is a place I really enjoyed, however, it's good to have a change. Schedules tend to be the same every year, tracks don't change. This is fun. It's good to have a bit of a change—especially when it's a track that nobody's been to, where a simulator has not been refined.
"It reshuffles the cards. A team like Penske or Ganassi won't have as much of an advantage."
As for much ballyhooed two-lane divided pit lane, Pagenaud said that a successful weekend with it could have other circuits looking at the model.
"Maybe it will be something we can use because we are growing," he said. "We have 27 cars here, that's a lot of cars, and sometimes it gets crowded on pit lane. So, if this works, maybe we could divide pit lane at other tracks and make it a bit better for us, a bigger space to park."
