Simon Pagenaud doesn't have to win to win. Understand?

Jim Ayello | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption What has happened in IndyCar Key story lines for IndyCar through the first half of the season.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Simon Pagenaud doesn’t have to win to win. Understand?

He knows that sometimes winning means being OK with not winning.

Put it this way: the defending Verizon IndyCar Series champion sees the big picture, perhaps clearer than most.

Take the wild west show at Texas for example. Despite qualifying 12th, Pagenaud knew he had a car capable of pulling down victory lane, but he wasn’t planning to take unnecessary chances when he knew so many others would. Instead, his plan that Saturday night was simple -- and familiar to March Madness fans across the country -- survive and advance.

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Pagenaud could smell a dangerous pack race coming from the moment tires hit pavement at practice Friday morning. He knew close quarters would draw out the aggression within many of his fellow drivers and he became all the more determined not to get caught up in the hoopla.

He drove thoughtfully, and as other drivers “unplugged their brains,” Pagenaud never grew agitated that his No. 1 car was not in the No. 1 spot.

There was even a point during the middle of the race when Pagenaud was running second and could have made an attempt on frontrunning Will Power -- but he thought better of it.

The road to victory was right in front of him, but it was clouded in danger and potential risk, so he elected to look into the future. Right there amid the wreckfest, Pagenaud decided he could give Power a fight for first and risk wiping them both out or wait back in second and take his shot -- if it opened -- later in the race.

“At that point, I was looking ahead. It’s something I always do in the races,” Pagenaud told IndyStar on Tuesday. “I thought if we could get to Lap 200 (of 250) being second behind Will that would be perfect for the team and perfect for us. We could fight it out at the end. That was the goal; that’s what we agreed on doing. And it was working just fine.”

After more than a half-dozen crashes, Pagenaud was among the six cars still on the lead lap at the end of the race. He finished third after slipping past Scott Dixon and Takuma Sato, who swept up the points leader in yet another late-race wreck.

IndyCar results at midseason How the IndyCar Series has played out after the season's first nine races.

Pagenaud wound up third and climbed to second in the championship standings -- just 13 points back of Dixon.

“I was not going to be satisfied with second” or third, Pagenaud said. “That’s not the game in the middle of the season if you can grab first. … But sometimes it’s more important to salvage as much as you can and take a third or second or fourth. You can only win a championship by scoring points. I’m very pragmatic that way. That is my style. It is definitely my strength as a driver to finish every lap.”

And that’s precisely what’s he done. Heading into this weekend’s race at Road America, Pagenaud is the only driver in the series to have completed all 1,208 laps. Only three other drivers (Tony Kanaan, Power and Josef Newgarden) are even within 100 laps of him.

“If you look at my stats from the beginning of my career in IndyCar, and coming from sports car, I’ve always been very focused on finishing races,” said Pagenaud, who is the only driver to sit in the top seven in laps completed each year since his rookie season of 2012. “I believe you can only learn by doing as many laps as possible. And as I said, you can only win a championship by scoring points.”

Pagenaud’s pragmatic pursuit of a second championship has served him well this season. Despite only one win (Phoenix), he’s second in the championship largely as a result of his three other podium finishes -- which have him tied with Dixon and Power for most this season.

At this point in the season last year, Pagenaud already had three of his series-best five wins.

But with Honda having stepped up its game, victories have become harder to come by, which makes his podium finishes all the more satisfying.

They are a testament to his team being able to maintain success without dominating like they did last season. Remember, not only did Pagenaud podium in six of the first nine races last year, but he started on the pole in five of them. This year, his four podiums have come from starting spots of 14th (St. Petersburg), third (Alabama), fifth (Phoenix) and 12th (Texas).

“Last year, we could DNF and win the next race,” Pagenaud said. “Not this year. We’ve had to adjust our thinking. … To be honest, though, I think we’re racing even better than last year. When I’m not on pole, I’m able to rely on them to give me an extra boost. It’s still very much a team sport. They’re showing they’re just as important as the driver or even more so sometimes. I would say that a lot of the results are because of great strategy and great pits stops. All in all, our potential is huge, because even when we don’t qualify so well, we’re still producing good results.”

It’s funny, Pagenaud said. When you win in the dominating fashion like he did last year, the expectations become so high that they are nearly impossible to match.

But he learned early on this season repeating isn’t necessarily about repeating. Understand?

To win a championship, Pagenaud doesn’t have to rampage through the calendar, picking up dominant wins everywhere he goes. He’s showing this season that he can win a championship with finesse and pragmatism. It might not be as sexy, but who cares about that?

Winning back-to-back championships is the only thing Pagenaud worries about, and if that means not winning another race this season -- so be it.

Follow IndyStar Motor Sports Insider Jim Ayello on Twitter and Instagram: @jimayello.