MALSHER: Top dozen Power plays, part 1 – 2006-’09

“I raced like a ***** in British Formula 3 [LEFT],” Will Power once told me. “I’d dive to the inside of another guy going into the corner, and just kind of make the pass by leaving him no place to go, no way to turn in. He'd have to wait. Sometimes I hadn’t even worked out how I’d exit the corner; I just knew that if I placed my car right, he wasn’t gonna exit before I did…

“What you need to do in F3 cars is be very precise, not let them get out of shape at all. They had 220 horsepower and a lot of grip so it was all about momentum, not scrubbing off speed, and I often just overdrove the cars.”

Understandable, perhaps. The kid who in 2002 had won seven of the 11 rounds of the Formula Holden championship (LEFT) – old F3000 cars with 350hp – was better at taming more powerful cars. So after several

podium finishes but no wins in his one-and-a-half seasons in F3, he scraped together enough money to graduate to World Series by Renault/Formula Renault 3.5 for a partial season in 2005 (BELOW LEFT), earning two wins before the cash dried up again.

At the same time, over this side of the Atlantic, Walker Racing – then called Team Australia – was wrestling with the thorny problem of Marcus Marshall. A lovely guy, he was simply too timid (or smart) to be throwing 750hp open-wheelers around street courses he’d never seen before. He rarely crashed, but he could be anywhere between one and four seconds off the pace of his teammate Alex Tagliani. As Team Australia concept co-founder Craig Gore growled to me at the San Jose race, “This project is supposed to be about bringing on rising stars and winners – not just having a token Aussie in there.”

Team principal Derrick Walker had come to the same conclusion somewhat earlier, so as we landed in Surfers Paradise, it was little surprise to learn W. Power would be in one of the green-and-yellow cars. Walker in fact had had to put a third program together at the last minute, as a crestfallen Marshall understandably refused to budge just before his home race and threatened legal action.

Marshall put on a brave face, and actually produced a brave performance, too, qualifying just 0.75sec off Tagliani at this very daunting 90sec track. But in between them on the grid was Power (BELOW), despite his having just a solitary test at Portland Raceway before the cars were flown to Oz. Pretty impressive.

Then, at Mexico City for the season finale, Power was just one-tenth off Tagliani around another 90sec track, and finished just a couple seconds behind on race day. That got our attention. And more importantly, Team Australia had found its guy for 2006.

Throughout that season, Power and race engineer Brandon Fry learned the ropes together. Walker Racing had been the last significant team to switch from Reynard to Lola chassis, so there were still mysteries of the B02/00 that hadn’t been fully explored yet. That left them some way short of the programs of Newman/Haas, Forsythe and even relative newcomers RuSPORT, and with everyone aware that a new car from Panoz was coming in 2007, it wasn’t worth investing too much in testing the outgoing model.

But both Tagliani and Power were eagerly into the engineering side of racing, and Alex was now partnered by someone whose feedback and speed more or less matched his own.

And then exceeded it. In the first seven races of the year, Tagliani outqualified Power five times. But by midseason, Will felt confident enough to reduce his reliance on Alex’s setups and find ones that suited his own driving style better. In the second half of the season, it was Power who turned the tables 5-2 in qualifying. Also notable was that at the three tracks he knew before the ’06 season started – Portland, Surfers Paradise and Mexico City – he was comfortably ahead.

Here, then, are the first six of his most significant drives in Indy cars that led to his full-time ride with Team Penske. They may not necessarily be his best, and they aren’t all victories, either. But they do mark significant building blocks in the U.S. open-wheel career of our new Verizon IndyCar Series champion.

 

SURFERS PARADISE, 2006
First pole
For Power, Surfers Paradise, the penultimate race of the season, was a case of what might have been (as it would remain!). He set pole position, his first in Champ Car, and was leading at almost half-distance – except for an off-strategy backmarker – when Sebastien Bourdais tried a move from way too far back, locked his brakes and bounced the Team Australia car into a tire barrier, necessitating a long pit stop for repairs.

If that made Bourdais less than popular with the Australian crowd and the graceless Gore, Walker had trained his young Jedi well in how to handle such matters, and Power shrugged off the gut-wrenching disappointment quite equably. “Have you spoken with Seb yet?” I asked when I saw him about an hour after the race. “Yeah!” he snarled, giving the big-eyes, clenched fists and body-builder flex…a pose he kept up for less than one second before grinning. “No. What’s the point? Wouldn’t change anything. I’m pissed about it because we were controlling the race, but at least we were able to show what we were capable of.”

He’d get another chance at the very next race.

MEXICO CITY, 2006
First podium
The front-row starters, Justin Wilson (RuSPORT) and Sebastien Bourdais (Newman/Haas) stole the show with a thrilling duel that saw Seabass grab the lead on the final lap, in this final race for the venerable Lola B2/00. But 45 seconds behind them, Power scored his first podium in U.S. open-wheel racing and clinched Rookie of the Year honors in great style.

Lacking a car to match either of those teams’ machines around the Circuit Hermanos Rodriguez in the dry, Power started fourth. One can only wonder what might have happened had the rain fallen throughout the race rather than starting at one-third distance and then drying before the end. When track conditions were at their worst, Power was lapping far quicker than anyone else, and closed on the second Newman/Haas car of Bruno Junqueira at two seconds per lap before moving into third. Forward progress was halted there as the track started to rapidly dry out, but in just 20 laps he’d pulled a half-minute gap to his teammate Tagliani, himself a fine wet-weather racer.

“The car was loose, exactly as I wanted it,” explained Power afterward, “so when it got wet, through Peraltada [the long 180deg right-hander at the end of the lap] I could kind of power it through with just a bit of oversteer all the way around.
“It’s a pity we’re just getting a handle on this car and next year we all change to the Panoz.…”

In fact, that was exactly what all the teams needed to try and regain ground on Newman/Haas.

LAS VEGAS, 2007
First win
Has the U.S. open-wheel scene ever been blessed with such a challenging and racy street course as the one Tony Cotman devised in downtown, old Las Vegas? Wide, bumpy, fast and challenging, and with a terrific grandstand on a bridge over the track – so the cars literally disappeared beneath the spectators – it required hard, aggressive driving across curbs and across the famous bump that caused cars to get all four wheels off the ground.

Is it any surprise, therefore, that the front row consisted of Power and Paul Tracy? The playing field had not only been leveled by presenting all the drivers with a track they’d never seen before, but also giving them all the handsome new Panoz DP01.
The Walker Racing No. 5 machine was on pole by 0.9sec, and although Will lost the lead to PT on a restart following a first-lap crash by a backmarker,  he moved confidently into the lead at Turn 1 on lap 11, and thereafter was only headed by those on different strategies. He led the final 12 laps of the race, and became the first Australian to win an Indy car race.
Incidentally, Power not only won this first race for the DP01, he also won its last, 13 months later in the final Champ Car race at Long Beach.

LONG BEACH, 2009
Proving to Penske

2008 had been a troubled year for Power, aside from the Long Beach win. He’d shown great pace at times with his new team, KV Racing, but for all Champ Car teams confronted with the old Dallara IR1 following the merger of Champ Car and Indy Racing League, it was a constant voyage of discovery. On ovals, they were usually way off, and on road and street courses, they were having to punch above their weight.

As well as that, Power was under pressure to fight for his ride, because the Aussie Vineyards money, which had funded his switch from Walker to KV, was going away at season’s end. It was unsettling for a driver, to say the least and so there was a big weight on his shoulders as all the IndyCar teams went Down Under for that non-points race at Surfers Paradise at season’s end. Power took pole by over one second, but when he made an unforced error and hit the wall while running quite easily at the front in the early stages of the race, he went from devastating to devastated in the space of 24 hours.

By now, however, Helio Castroneves was being investigated by the IRS and while the court case went on over the winter, Team Penske needed a driver for car No. 3. Derrick Walker spoke to Roger Penske and although Will describes his performance in the team interview as “terrible,” The Captain had seen enough on track and face-to-face to take the gamble.

St. Petersburg, the first round of 2009, wasn’t exceptional as he got beaten by new teammate Ryan Briscoe into the Firestone Fast Six, and while RB went on to win the race, Power made a mess of a pit stop, sliding into the Ganassi pitbox of Scott Dixon. Combined with a less-than-convincing preseason test at Homestead while ill, uncertainty and nerves were preventing Will from showing his true potential. Or perhaps he was just too much in awe of his new environment.

“Man, Penske is how I’d imagine a top Formula 1 team to be,” he said when we met on Thursday at Long Beach. “It’s just so organized and…professional. Honestly, a part-time drive here is worth a full season anywhere else, so even if Helio comes back, and all Roger could offer me – even next year – was just five or six races, I’d be disappointed but I’d probably still take it. It’s a great opportunity. I just need to make the most of it.”

On the Friday, Power was fastest (ABOVE, Marshall Pruett photo) …but also learned that Helio had been cleared by a court in Florida, and would be flying in to reclaim the No. 3 Penske entry on Saturday. In classic Penske fashion, another car, the No. 12, was prepared for Saturday, decked in Verizon livery. So Power took pole in that, instead….

While leading the race, he heard what he thought was a call for a full-course caution over his radio and backed off, allowing IndyCar returnee Dario Franchitti to grab the lead and ultimately, the win. Rather than pull anything risky in retaliation, Power decided to play it smart and settle for second. But Power had done enough to convince RP that a third entry in the Indianapolis 500 would be worthwhile.

INDY 500, 2009
The professional
Even now, despite knowing that The Captain is averse to team orders – he likes his drivers to do the right thing by the team of their own volition – I doubt he’d have been happy to see Power giving Castroneves a hard time on Memorial Day weekend, 2009. Throughout the previous weeks of practice, Penske’s old master of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Rick Mears, had been giving Power a lot of attention at a track on which the Aussie had raced only once. Mears, Tim Cindric and RP stressed to

Power the importance of playing himself in gently, so while Castroneves and Briscoe dueled for pole, once Power had gotten safely into the Top 9, he was discouraged from going out to improve his grid position.

But past half distance on race day, Power drew within two seconds of eventual winner Helio so at the very least, would have finished second that day. Instead, a slight screw-up by a tire changer knocked him out of contention and sent Will’s chief engineer Nigel Beresford into the rev limiter.

“What the $%^& was that?!” he yelled as he slammed down his clipboard and Power pulled away, now down in sixth place. He got back up to fifth place before the end of the race, and although that sounds underwhelming, it remains his best finish at the Brickyard.

So far.

EDMONTON, 2009
First win for The Captain

To be fair to the others, Power knew this track from his Champ Car days, but when he took pole at Edmonton and outqualified the Penske full-timers, Castroneves and Briscoe, as he had at Long Beach and Toronto, the case was building for a full-time gig in 2010.

On race day, he held his nerve and took the lead at the start and pulled away from the field. It wasn’t going to be easy though. As a part-timer, his pit box was at pit entry, giving the other two Penskes and the Ganassi cars of Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti an obvious opportunity to jump him in the pit stops, especially if there was a full-course caution that bunched the field. Remarkably, though, the race was caution-free until the very last lap when Tomas Scheckter crashed.

Robin Miller and I were at Firestone’s timing and scoring stand just before the first round of pit stops, and suddenly Robin’s face cracked into a smile as he listened to the TV broadcast over his headphones. “That kid’s so cool,” he said. “Power just radioed to his team, ‘Should I do some fast laps so they don’t jump us in the pits?’ They said, ‘We should be OK, son. You’re leading by seven seconds already…’”

Power went on to win in unruffled style. “Not bad for a bunch of part-timers!” yelled Beresford over the radio.

The next race, at Kentucky Speedway, had its grid set by by points following a rain-out during qualifying so Power had to come from the back and was thus put an alternate strategy that saw him lead 29 laps. No lucky yellow flags came his way so he ended up only ninth, but he had high hopes going into Sonoma….

Then came the huge crash that broke four of his vertebrae. Roger Penske promised him “something” for 2010, and that alone psychologically helped Will through the remainder of the year as he healed.

Tomorrow – Power’s top six drives as a Penske full-timer.