AUSTIN, TX – There’s no doubt about it, despite not winning last year’s IndyCar championship, Team Penske is still the top dog in the NTT IndyCar Series. Since 2016, Penske has won 26 of the 50 races. The next best in that timeframe is Andretti Autosport whos had eight trips to victory lane. Chip Ganassi Racing is a distant third with six wins themselves.

But, if Penske doesn’t want to lose that top spot and get back to true championship form, then they need to adapt better on street courses.

Last year, Penske won six times, three were on natural road courses, two on short ovals and the other on a superspeedway. In fact, in 2017, Penske had just one victory on a street course then too.

That’s 1 for their last 10 overall on street courses.

In this day and age of IndyCar racing, that’s not going to cut it, especially when points battles are coming down to just a few points.

Just look at what they did this past year on them. At St. Pete, they finished 7th (Josef Newgarden), 10th (Will Power) and 13th (Simon Pagenaud). In Long Beach, they were second (Power), seventh (Newgarden) and 24th (Pagenaud). In Belle Isle 1, they were seventh (Power), ninth (Newgarden) and 17th (Pagenaud). In Belle Isle 2, they were second (Power), 10th (Pagenaud) and 15th (Newgarden). In the final race at Toronto, they were second (Pagenaud), ninth (Newgarden) and 18th (Power).

Compare that to Scott Dixon and Alexander Rossi and you can see where they missed.

Dixon, was sixth, 11th, first, fourth and first respectively. Rossi, was third, first, third, 12th and eighth respectively.

It all comes down to balance as street course races are difficult. The combination of the tracks being slick as well as rough too, it’s a hard setup to figure out. With the new car last year, the Penske group didn’t have the best setups to contend. It hurt their title hopes.

This is the biggest area they need to fix.