But it’s his performance through 2014 that has earned Castroneves another dose of respect from Power. For much of his IndyCar career, Castroneves gave the impression that despite an abundance of natural talent and car control, he was both lacking technical savvy and also consistency, and so his form each year was patchy. Come the end of any given season, it was all too easy to see how/where/why his title hopes had disappeared. However, since Power’s arrival at Penske as a part-timer in 2009, the veteran has gradually upped his technical game, and Jonathan Diuguid, Helio’s race engineer since 2013, has taken that process even further. Now, at the age of thirty-nine, Castroneves is expected to be a threat on any type of racetrack on the IndyCar calendar – street course, natural road course, short oval and superspeedway. As a genuinely impressed Power puts it, “Helio is faster than ever,” and he’s aware this is both a blessing and a curse. The yin is that Castroneves’ feedback is now a hell of a lot more useful to both Will and Team Penske as a whole; the yang for Will is that now he has a tougher rival – a major championship threat, and one who’s blessed with the exact same resources and, theoretically, the exact same car.
Still, no gain without pain: his teammate’s renewed strength is something Power has learned to live with throughout this season. Overall, he regards it as a positive, acknowledging that his own competitive desire feeds off a regularly refueled rivalry – a process that isn’t discouraged at Team Penske. Ol’ Roger is traditionally swift to prevent intra-team struggles getting out of control and spilling into the public domain, but he’s also an ex-racing driver who likes to see his guys push one another. And, anyway, The Captain is well aware that he can’t change nature: a topline racer is one of an ultra-competitive breed, desperate to prove who’s top dog in any and every situation. Housing at least two of them may have its occasional downside but, overall, should benefit the team.
Should. In the case of these two, Team Penske’s yet to feel that benefit in championship terms. Despite all the race wins accrued in five full seasons together, Power and Castroneves (who’s been with the team since 2000) have finished runner-up in the IndyCar points table three times each, and between them have claimed this first-of-the-losers slot for the past four years. Thus 2014 is regarded both internally and externally as a welcome change. The IndyCar Series itself is guaranteed a first-time champ, and Roger Penske is all but guaranteed his first IndyCar champion in eight years. Schmidt Peterson Motorsports’ Simon Pagenaud has impressed many by clinging to an outside chance of taking the honors in this final round, but it would require a highly unlikely string of events to occur – something akin to both Penske drivers being abducted by aliens in the early laps this evening.
Mind you, that concept is only slightly weirder than what’s actually happened to Power recently. This race at Fontana is the climax of a crazy fourteen days for him – a typical sample of the 2014 season and, arguably, Will’s career as a whole.
Two weeks ago, around the flat one-mile oval in Milwaukee for the sixteenth of the season’s eighteen rounds, Power’s searing run to pole position proved the cornerstone for arguably the most dominant drive by any IndyCar driver all year. On race day, the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske entry was at the front for 229 of the 250 laps of America’s oldest track. Almost as significantly, Power’s nearest opponent that weekend wasn’t Castroneves but the other Penske machine of former Indy car champion Juan Pablo Montoya, who thereby statistically kept himself in the title hunt. Realistically, the Colombian’s chances were still tenuous, but at least that would mentally free him to just go for it over the final two races, unhindered by thoughts of the championship. If it happened, it happened; if not, no worries, because no one was expecting it. Castroneves, by contrast, left Milwaukee still very much in the running for that first elusive crown, yet had just suffered a psychological blow. That weekend he was relatively nowhere, lapped by his teammates on his way to a dismal eleventh-place finish.
Power was by no means home and dry, though, and felt awkward the following week when legendary Indy car journalist and broadcaster Robin Miller wrote a story on RACER.com pointing out that Will should have been heading to the penultimate race in Sonoma, California, with the title all but sewn up. Instead, IndyCar’s controversial preseason decision to give out double points for the three 500-mile races – Indianapolis, Pocono and the finale in Fontana – had artificially kept Castroneves in the title hunt. Under the traditional points system, wrote Miller, Power would have a 75-point buffer between himself and his teammate, despite Castroneves’ runner-up places at both Indianapolis and Pocono, where Power had finished a relatively disastrous ninth and tenth respectively. The reality, by contrast, was that the gap was 39 points . . . and there were 158 left on the table.
IndyCar’s new points system, then, had done its job by almost guaranteeing the championship would remain open until the final checkered flag. Some tried to justify this random doubling of the value of three races, but most thought it ridiculous that seventh place at, say, Pocono could earn a driver as many points as winning at Long Beach or Mid-Ohio.
“It’s the same for everybody – nothing we can do except keep focused and earn as many points as possible,” Power told Miller. But that was Will deliberately sounding reasoned while on the record. Away from the Dictaphones and video cameras, he’d been aggravated by this misguided notion ever since IndyCar had announced it less than two weeks before the first round. And now that rule was biting him on the ass.
At least the Milwaukee win had dampened his agitation – “Our path is easier now, but it’s by no means easy” – and Will went into Sonoma as confident as a glass-half-empty guy can be. A late-season breakthrough in car setup had renewed the confidence of both he and Faustino that the perplexing technical misstep that dogged the No. 12 car for much of the year was now behind them.
Sonoma Raceway, the beautiful, undulating road course in California’s Napa Valley, is a track with which Power has a love– hate relationship. It’s where, in 2009, he suffered his biggest career setback – namely, a broken back – but also a venue at which he’d since delivered three wins and three pole positions in four years. And in 2014, he was on his usual form around the 12-turn, 2.52-mile layout, grabbing pole by over three-tenths of a second. On a 77-second lap that margin sounds minimal, but it was as commanding an edge as it’s possible to achieve in modern-era Indy car racing. And on a circuit where it’s notoriously difficult to pass, no less important was the fact that Castroneves was down in sixth after blowing his last qualifying run. The other title contender, Pagenaud, appeared out of the equation, braking issues confining the Schmidt Peterson Motorsports driver to fifteenth on the grid.
Power, who’d confessed he’d stopped sleeping well after taking pole at Milwaukee, went to bed that night in Sonoma with the same feeling as seven days earlier – first job done but primary job tomorrow. However he was in for the rudest of rude awakenings. A 6.0 magnitude earthquake shook the foundations of his hotel at 3.20 a.m., sending picture frames, bottles and bathroom mirrors crashing to the floor and triggering the hotel staff to evacuate the building. It wasn’t the end of the world, as Power had assumed when he was first rattled to his senses, but it was the end of the night’s rest for him.
As a man who says he can’t function without a good night’s sleep, Will functioned just fine for the first twenty-nine laps of the race and continued his domination of the weekend. However two back-to-back full-course caution periods bunched the field together and triggered a round of pit stops, and it was at this point, when every tenth of a second was vital, that Chip Ganassi Racing’s pit crew vaulted reigning champion Scott Dixon out of the pits ahead of Power. They re-emerged in seventh and eighth, behind only those who’d gone off-strategy and elected not to stop. Now Will had a fight on his hands for the first time all day.
And he blew it. Coming down to the hairpin Turn 7 following the restart, Power hugged the inside line and braked early to avoid running into Dixon. That allowed two other cars on his
outside to draw level and crowd the No. 12, forcing it to remain on the inside at corner exit to avoid losing his front wing on another car. Problem was, that was the unused part of the track, and was covered in rubber “marbles” from the tires of passing racecars, as well as the coating of sand and dust inherent with Sonoma Raceway. Will got on the gas a fraction too hard and too soon for his fresh but cold tires to handle.
“It was like I was on ice,” he said afterward. “The back came around so suddenly, considering how slow we go through there [approximately 35 mph], at first I thought someone must have hit me. And then, once the car had let go, I just had to gas it, make sure I didn’t stall. If I’d stalled, we might have gone a lap down while the Safety Team got me restarted.”
A sequence of spectacular smoky pirouettes got the car pointing the right way, so all was not lost. All was not good, either. Power was now at the back of the pack, with an ill-handling car thanks to the violent heat cycle the rear tires had been put through in just a few abrasive seconds. Saving the engine had killed the Firestones and for the remainder of the stint, he was just trying to control the violently wayward rear end of the car while not losing touch with the back of the pack.
“Man, that was hard,” said Power, eyes widening at the recollection. “I had no rear grip at all. I was just on tip-toes through the fast sections and I did almost lose it at one point where the car went light over a crest. All I could do was maintain the gap to whoever was in front.”
One of those in front and, amazingly, not too far in front, was Castroneves. He’d been caught up in a Lap 1 collision not of his making, had made an extra pit stop for repairs and was now running eighteenth, just two cars ahead of his teammate. Bearing in mind Montoya had only just reached the top ten – a qualifying indiscretion had consigned him to near the back of the grid – Penske’s day was now looking pretty disastrous. But Power could still make progress. A strong out-lap on cold tires after his second pit stop put him ahead of Castroneves and as others’ pit strategies played out, he was into the top dozen when he muscled past James Hinchcliffe of Andretti Autosport in the closing stages. Boldly diving down the inside of Justin Wilson’s Dale Coyne Racing machine at the final turn of the final lap, Power attempted to grab ninth, but an out-of-fuel car just before the start-finish line had brought out yellow flags, which mean proceed with caution and hold station. While the No. 12 did cross the line ahead of Wilson, Power was docked one place in the final results.
So tenth place on a day when his championship rival had trailed home only eighteenth. It should have been way, way better for Power but it could have been much, much worse. He didn’t really know how to handle the conflicting emotions after the race – mad at himself for the mistake and for leaving the championship door ajar for Castroneves, but trying to see the positive side of extending his points lead to 51.
And then the bullshit started. A simple error, the kind every racer makes a couple of times each season, was apparently the beginning of the end of Power’s title campaign, if you believed what you read on fan forums immediately post-race. And the “expert” media chimed in, too. Power threw the race away, now he’s going to do the same with the championship. He’s cracking under pressure. He’s a choker. He’s going to do what he did three times before. That had always been a spectacularly inaccurate generalization, but it was a neat sound bite for the anti-Power members of the press whose prejudices emanated from two distinct and unreasonable schools of thought. There were those who still missed the public persona and charming geniality of Dario Franchitti, Power’s former nemesis, and there were those who automatically gave Castroneves a sympathy vote because “at his age, how many more chances is he going to get?”.
Seriously.
In the aftermath, Power wisely kept away from the gossip, and the back and forth between the pro- and anti-groups of IndyCar fans and media. It would have served no purpose to get involved because 1) he didn’t want to get riled, 2) he’d never convince the haters, and 3) he couldn’t go back and alter the facts. What was done was done.
One of Power’s most important decisions, made in the second half of the 2013 season and carried into 2014, was that he would no longer dwell on the bad days, be they the result of mechanical issues, simple bad luck or genuine mistakes. As long as he and all those around him learned from any blunders, there was no need for a period of penance. Mere days after a significant error, and mere days before the most significant race of his life, his new policy would serve him well.
Further helping Power to focus on what was to come rather than what had just gone was the fact that his commitments in the days running up to the Fontana showdown didn’t involve much specialist media. Appearances for sponsors and interviews with general news media outlets don’t tend to require a great deal of deep thought – “Is your name really Will Power?” and “How much would it mean to you to win the title this weekend?” That kind of thing. So when Power and Castroneves did radio and TV appearances – some apart, some together – Power came across well because he was reasonably relaxed, subconsciously welcoming the distraction from the momentous weekend ahead.
This mild reverie was interrupted by a five-hour-plus test (practice session) at Auto Club Speedway on the Wednesday but after that even Penske’s traditional Thursday-night dinner with the press went smoothly. California remains one of US open-wheel racing’s stronger states, and the local journalists are knowledgeable but also old-school polite – they let the driver do the talking. Power responded affably.
Actually, there was one crack in Power’s 2014 focus forward façade. On the Tuesday evening, after describing the Sonoma race, he couldn’t help asking what the points situation would be now if he hadn’t spun and had settled for a relatively easy second place behind Dixon. Without waiting for the reply, he turned away and said, “Actually, don’t tell me; can’t think that way. We just know we’ve got to finish in the top six at Fontana if Helio wins . . . and we’ve got to go in assuming he’s going to win and get all the bonus points [one for pole, one for leading a lap and two for leading most laps]. He can probably do that.”
That was an interesting blend of new- and old-school Power – looking ahead and expecting the worst. As things transpired, he was smart to think that way. Power and Castroneves dominated morning practice on Friday at the two-mile oval, setting 221 mph lap averages, almost 2 mph clear of their nearest pursuer. But come the qualifying session, in ambient temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, something went majorly awry for the No. 12. On his first flying lap, Power found himself walking the car up the track, having to back out of the throttle, drift it and catch it to avoid hitting the wall. The lost momentum not only killed that lap, it severely injured his second, too, and so his two-lap average was a disastrous 214 mph, relegating him to the back row of the grid.
And like Power had gloomily predicted, Castroneves had earned pole position and an extra point.
Inevitably, this triggered another round of media speculation that with only himself to beat, Power was going to do exactly that. Here was a man who needed to conquer his demons, they said, and instead he was running to meet and greet them. Lost in the negativity were two crucial facts – 1) Power was the defending race winner here at Auto Club Speedway, and 2) he kept his head together in the aftermath of that horrible qualifying run and finished Friday evening’s practice session third fastest. That mental adjustment had come easy because he knew exactly what had gone wrong in the afternoon. Just a couple of years earlier, his car’s wayward behavior on an oval might have drained Power’s confidence, dulled his competitive edge, and persuaded him that staying well within his comfort zone was the right policy going forward. But 2014-spec Power had looked confident again by evening practice.
Not easing anyone’s peace of mind, though, was the serious accident that occurred that evening between Ganassi’s American driver Charlie Kimball and the Russian Mikhail Aleshin of Schmidt Peterson Motorsports. Aleshin’s initial mistake was minor but at lap speeds avera
ging 215 mph, everything becomes exaggerated. What should have just been a rapid, hard but ultimately harmless thump into the Turn 4 wall became something more serious when, in its swift ride up the banked track, the SPM car launched off Kimball’s machine and onto the wall, tearing up the catch-fencing fixed on top as it dissipated its energy. Kimball had the Dallara’s cockpit protection to thank for escaping without injury, but Aleshin was not so lucky and needed to be flown to hospital where he was diagnosed with a concussion, broken ribs, internal chest injuries and a broken collarbone. Scratch one entry from the MAVTV 500.
Aleshin’s absence would barely make Power’s job any simpler. He still had twenty cars trying to beat him and, by qualifying at the back, he’d given his toughest rivals a head start. On his side was the fact this was a 500-mile race on a wide oval – plenty of time and space to get to the front, where he belonged. Working against him would be the fact that any dramas while the cars were running close together in the race’s early stages would happen ahead of him, not behind, and as proven by the Aleshin/Kimball clash, at these unrelentingly high speeds, one driver’s misjudgment can easily and rapidly affect others. Having steered his way through the debris of the accident, Power had received Fate’s memo.
The Sheer Force of Will Power Page 2
