Power makes a 'crazy day' work for him

Will Power edged further up the all-time list of IndyCar winners with his 32nd career victory in the ABC Supply 500 at Pocono, lifting him out of a tie for ninth with Paul Tracy and Dario Franchitti. His third win of the season also re-energized his title hopes. Although he remains in fifth place in the standings, he's now within 42 points of the leader – Team Penske teammate Josef Newgarden, who he held at bay through Pocono's nail-biting final laps.

"What a crazy day for us," declared Power. "I mean, we had a really strong car. We were getting back to the front, and then suddenly, boom, the wing broke. Lucky I didn't hit the wall. Went a lap down, and then just was thinking, 'Be smart, anything can happen. You get your lap back and get through the field.' And that's exactly what we did.

"Once I got my lap back, I was like, 'All right, it's game on; I can definitely get back up there.' I was thinking like top 5, but when I was pumping out like 217 [mph] laps, I'm like, 'OK, we're going to make some serious hay here.' Then we changed the rear wing because that pod was broken – when Hinch [James Hinchcliffe] almost crashed earlier, I thought he was going to spin in front of me, so I started to really slow up, and then Charlie [Kimball] ran into the back of me; unfortunately he couldn't see that Hinch was up near the wall.

"The guys did a fantastic job in the pits having to do all that and still be able to go ahead and win the race."

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In fact, as it turned out, those early delays actually ended up helping him, Power acknowledged.

"Yeah, I mean, that's textbook IndyCar racing – the fact that we got off sequence and so we had more fuel, so we could go longer and have some clear air and pump out some really fast laps, that's what allowed us to win. And the car was obviously really good. But yeah, never give up in an IndyCar race, particularly on an oval in a 500-mile race."

The decisive final laps were also a matter of perseverance for Power, who had Newgarden shadowing his every move.

"With how close he was in [Turn] 2, if I left that open he would pass me and he would win," the Australian said of his younger teammate. "And he goes through any little gap, so I wasn't leaving any chance of him going all the way to the inside. So I was very aggressive like that, and it paid off."

Power said it wasn't a surprise to him that the fight for the win came down to two Chevrolet-powered cars, despite the earlier dominance of the Hondas.

"I had a new engine in, so we had a bit of an upgrade. I think the engine was better," he said. "So yeah, I think as you saw at Texas, same deal on the superspeedways. It's a different configuration than Indy. We all have to run the Dallara rear wing, so that seems to even everything out there aerodynamically. But yeah, I think our cars were really good compared to the Honda."

Power emphasized that his pitting from – and retaining – a substantial lead that changed the complexion of the race was not the result of a short fill, but of his speed on the track.

"The big gain was as people peeled off, I was able to do 217 [mph] laps," said the Australian. "I think that's close to 3 miles an hour quicker than what anyone else was doing at the time, so it opened up for me to pump out some seriously fast laps – good in-laps, good pit stops, good out-laps. It all combined to having that big lead."