The Sheer Force of Will Power

by David Malsher

  Power was contrite afterward, according to Roger Penske. “I think Will knew once he saw the replay that he hadn’t made the best decision. If we have to address something with any of the drivers, we handle that behind closed doors. But our guys are sharp and they’re pretty good at working things out among themselves . . . remembering the team is the most important thing.”

  Cindric acknowledges: “There are times when you have to sit drivers down and remind them that the team comes first. Roger Penske isn’t in this for fun, and if any drivers ever think this is their house rather than Roger’s, things are going to change. But Roger employs drivers who generally don’t need to be hit over the head with that. Helio is the best team player a guy can have, but there are days when he’ll block Will, so if you make him think about it afterward, he’ll say, ‘You’re right, I got caught up in it,’ and he’ll remember to do the right thing by the team going forward. He sets a good example, Will has followed it, and I think Montoya understands it better at Penske than he’s ever understood it anywhere else.”

  This internal storm – more of a squall, actually – blew through fast, but Power’s relegation to tenth place at Pocono as Castroneves went on to finish second meant they were now level in the championship standings. When Iowa was also a bust for Power – tire pick-up during a final caution period dropped him from fifth to fourteenth – Castroneves passed him for the lead of the points table. Not that Will knew this of course, since he wasn’t even glancing at standings . . .

  “Right . . . but I guessed it was bad,” he says. “Then when I aquaplaned into the wall at Toronto as we were coming to get the green flag, I knew it was really bad! Race Control waving off the start, and delaying the race until the next day was my get-out-of-jail card. But it was a get-out-of-jail card for the whole series, honestly – and I’m not just saying that because it suited me. The drainage at that track isn’t good, and no one except the leader could see more than 20 feet in front of them down the straight to Turn 3. The idea of doing 160 mph in that situation is what makes me think IndyCar made the right call. I mean, when the Safety Car – driven by [two-time Indy 500 winner] Arie Luyendyk – skids down an escape road while we’re following it at 50 mph, that’s telling you something about the conditions . . .

  “So I got reinstated at the back the next day, but that was a lot better than being a spectator. They shortened the race, because they had to squeeze two races into one day, so ninth was as high as I could get by the end – it didn’t leave Tim any wiggle room to try an alternative strategy because we only needed one pit stop – but in the circumstances, I can’t complain, right?

  “Anyway, that was a turning point. Helio had finished second that race, and I think by now someone had told me I was X number of points behind him in the championship [it was 28], so I was just determined that, from here on, I would beat him in every round.”

  In the second Toronto race, again struck by rain, Power sat in the wheel tracks of Castroneves while also having to defend from Kanaan, but at half-distance moved around the outside of Helio at Turn 3 to take the lead. Later, on a restart, he’d have to cede best to the feistiness and opportunism of Kanaan and Conway, but Will was thinking big picture. On a day when Castroneves was classified twelfth, caught up in typical Toronto carnage, third place was a strong result. Stronger still was the race at Mid-Ohio. A lukewarm sixth place – “We were still having our setup problems at that stage,” says Power – was far better than Castroneves’ nineteenth. Already consigned to fifteenth on the grid after spinning in torrential conditions during qualifying, Helio lost several laps at the start of the race while having electrical troubles remedied. From Power’s perspective, that at least rebalanced the books after his own mechanical trouble in Houston.

  Says Faustino: “Obviously a sixth place is ‘whatever’, but that Mid-Ohio race actually gave us a technical breakthrough, the one we’d been looking for all year. We only had time to make minor improvements to the car – not enough to be fast – but by the end of the weekend, we’d tried enough alterations to give ourselves a very good sense of where we’d been going wrong with the setup at previous road and street courses. So then we got one of our rare tests and went to Sonoma to try this complete U-turn in setup philosophy, and suddenly we were right back on it. You can’t believe how much of a relief that was. Just in time.”

  While the extreme high of Milwaukee, extreme low of the Sonoma race and the build-up to the Fontana finale have been discussed in Chapter 1, Faustino’s perspective on all three adds yet more detail.

  “Milwaukee was one of the places we’d had a chance to test in the summer, and I know Will really wanted to win that one. He felt that without a backmarker getting in the way there the year before, he could have taken the fight to [2013 Milwaukee winner] Hunter-Reay instead of just finishing third. Well, during a test there, we came across a few good things that really made a difference, and we took those into the race weekend and found they applied.

  “But the funny thing is, we weren’t quick at all in practice because we were running full tanks and old tires, working on our race setup. No one outside the team saw anything special from us, and to be honest, there was nothing we saw internally to suggest we were in good shape. But Will kept trying to reassure us – ‘We have a good car, trust me. Let’s keep focusing on the race.’ That was an example of Will becoming a really good leader of our group, doing the right thing when the rest of us were doubting ourselves. And so, before qualifying, we were, ‘Okay, we’ll trust you’, and just did what we could, picked the gearing he wanted and trimmed out. And then he went out and put it on pole by a big margin for a 22-second lap. We were all impressed.

  “We didn’t get overexcited because 1) because you never know how the race might go with yellows and so on, and 2) we’ve qualified well there before and raced like crap, so we still weren’t totally convinced. But again during the race, we were so quick. Even when Kanaan looked fast and gave us a hard time after a pit stop, he couldn’t keep the tires under him like we could. I mean, we did that race with one fewer pit stops than anyone else while going faster than anyone else. When you consider that Milwaukee’s probably one of the best ovals for flat-out handling, where the driver really has to drive the whole time, not just steer, that win was awesome. Will was proud of it and so was I – my first win on a short oval. That was my highlight of the season.”

  By contrast . . .

  “Yeah, Sonoma, obviously, we all felt terrible after doing the hard bit of rediscovering our speed advantage. We wanted to really take advantage of that and put the title pretty much out of reach that weekend but, instead, we left the door open for Helio. And obviously we opened it a bit more after qualifying at Fontana.

  “We felt like we’d make good progress with race setup in the Wednesday test at Fontana, so we didn’t want to confuse ourselves working on them more in Friday morning practice because the temperatures then would be completely different from what we’d race in. So instead we just did two mock qualifying runs and we were fastest in both. Will had taken a line around the track that he thought would be appropriate for qualifying, but when it got hot and nasty, that line didn’t work because it sent him across the tar seams in the track, and that just sent him up toward the wall. Suddenly we were last and Helio was on pole.”

  Faustino giggles then sighs. “If we ever needed to create any more drama in our lives, that was it right there. It’s like we were creating a made-for-TV special.”

  And in a way, they were.

  Chapter 20

  Hot summer night

  The car feels fine on the warm-up laps – engine temps good, revs smooth – but Will Power’s starting on the outside lane of a three-by-three grid. On the left of him will be Sebastian Saavedra and further over on the inside lane will be Carlos Munoz. Power’s already decided to hang back at the start, allow the twenty crazies up ahead to sort themselves in relatively orderly fashion. That’ll give his spotter CR Crews enough chance to warn him if t
here’s something to avoid, and give himself enough chance to swerve and tip-toe around any debris. With the steering rack slowed down on these big ovals, and speeds of up to 220 mph, accident avoidance can require a lot of space.

  Lagging massively at the start, Power trips the lap counter in nineteenth. On the second lap, his job becomes just a little harder, though he doesn’t know it. His only real rival for the title, teammate Helio Castroneves, has taken the lead and thus grabbed a bonus point. Two laps later, Power is up to seventeenth, and Saavedra and Justin Wilson are becoming smaller in his mirrors. Next to go are his old teammate Ryan Briscoe and the other theoretical title contender, Simon Pagenaud, who a few laps later will pit with handling difficulties. Mental or physical legacy of his shunt in testing earlier that week? Who knows? Who cares? He’s just another guy behind him. Then it’s Sébastien Bourdais who falls to the No. 12 sword. He was one of Power’s fiercest competitors for the win here at Auto Club Speedway the year before. What the hell’s wrong with him tonight? Who knows? Who cares? He’s just another guy behind him . . .

  Not that Power has any reason to gloat. He can feel his tires losing grip a little sooner than expected, perhaps legacy of taking the lower, shorter line to make his passes, and therefore turning the wheel just that fraction tighter, scrubbing the tires that fraction more. It explains why Briscoe catches up and demotes him to fifteenth before the first round of pit stops. Like Power has said over the preceding days – all his racing career, in fact – this isn’t going to be easy. However, now his other teammate, Juan Montoya, and Scott Dixon have demoted Castroneves to third.

  Power pits on Lap 35, and has some front wing taken out to try and counteract the car’s slightly tail-happy tendencies toward the end of the previous stint. The crew does a slick job, Power’s in-lap is smooth and his out-lap is exceptional; once everyone’s pitted, he’s back ahead of Briscoe and now also Munoz. That puts Will twelfth, while Castroneves is dropping the opposite way – now fourth behind Montoya, Dixon and James Hinchcliffe.

  Lap 50, only 20 per cent of the race complete, and Power noses ahead of Graham Rahal for eleventh, but he’s sent on a voyage of discovery to the bottom lane, as Graham stays alongside and the pair of them have to lap the troubled Pagenaud. Hmm, not much grip down here because no one’s been using it since the opening lap, so there’s still sand and hard-to-see detritus. Power backs off a fraction – caution’s the better part of valor again – to spend some time getting up to a higher line and to get rid of the scuzz on his tires. That temporary slowing allows Rahal, Briscoe and Munoz to get past and drop him to fourteenth. Will’s not asking Tim Cindric over the radio about the championship situation, but he’s got a feeling fourteenth won’t be enough. It certainly leaves no safety margin. Time to get after it again.

  Munoz and Power demote Rahal once more, and by the time he pits on Lap 68, Will has passed Munoz again, for twelfth place. Again the stop is flawless, again his in- and out-laps are swift but unhurried and mistake-free. He’s up to tenth. All Team Penske crews are on top form tonight, though, and Castroneves is back up to second, until first Ed Carpenter, then Dixon and then Ryan Hunter-Reay demote him to fifth before Lap 100. This isn’t what Helio needs. He was hoping for more bonus points for leading most laps. Doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

  By way of contrast Will’s confidence is increasing. He doesn’t have a great-handling car tonight, but the tires’ grip is lasting a little longer now the heat of the day has subsided and the race is into its twilight run. In a mesmerizing manner, the track’s spotlights flutter the shadows of fence posts and spotlight stands across the soft curves and hard edges of the DW12s as they circulate.

  And Elizabeth, headset on in pit lane, sees none of the artistry of the relentless pack of cars hurtling past at 220 mph. She’s got her back to the track as usual, and in her hand is a mangled plastic water bottle from which she’s drunk every drop and wrung every contortion. All fingers are crossed but she’s too nervous to stand still; instead she paces around like a discontented tiger in a zoo, occasionally looking up to allow a small smile for family and friends. She’s listening to the team, of course, but isn’t hearing much from her husband. When he does speak, he sounds as unruffled as he’s appeared to be on track. Calm? Probably not. Methodical? Definitely.

  On Lap 105, Will brings his car down pit lane once more for a scheduled stop. He arrives in tenth place, leaves in tenth place, and now he feels grip. As the halfway point of the race approaches, he allows himself to creep up nearer his limit, and over the next twenty laps he passes Munoz, Charlie Kimball and Josef Newgarden.

  Seventh is the position he retains following the next stop on Lap 141. Unlike two of his previous pit stops, this time he asks for no changes to the car’s front-wing angle, which can be adjusted by the crew with just a flick of a lever on the nose. Now it’s Castroneves’ turn to feel confident as he’s back in the lead, but were the race to be stopped now, with the No. 3 in P1 and the No. 12 in P7, Will would be champion by just one point. Passing Munoz again – the talented Colombian is on a slightly different strategy than the main players – gives Power a bit more breathing room. But what does that mean, truly? If he loses it, he loses it, and it really won’t matter by how big a margin. Will, better than most, knows that.

  Yellow, yellow, yellow! Full-course caution, the first of the night. It’s Lap 175, and Hunter-Reay has looped into a spin coming off Turn 4 while dueling with Tony Kanaan. The Andretti Autosport car goes plowing across the wide expanse of grass in front of pit lane and stalls. ‘Damn! Why couldn’t he have done that here two years ago?’ murmurs one avid Power supporter.

  It’s an ungracious thought, especially as the 2012 IndyCar champion has now inadvertently helped his former adversary: race leader Castroneves has the pack on his tail once more, and Power has moved up another place.

  Although the IndyCar Safety Team is quick to get Hunter-Reay restarted and on his way, Race Control leaves the caution flags out for eleven laps to allow the sweeper trucks to blast the rubber tire marbles off the track surface and increase the usable track margins once more. That could make the restart interesting. In the meantime, on Lap 178, as the pit lane opens once more, there’s a mass pit stop. The No. 12 crew and Power are slicker than ever, and he fractionally beats Montoya to the pit-out line as they run side by side. It’s so close a call that both drivers are unsure who was ahead, and Will allows Juan in front. Then the order comes down from Race Control to swap positions. Power is fourth.

  Better even than the three Penske teams, however, have been two of the Ganassi crews, who’ve managed to jump Kanaan and Dixon ahead of Castroneves. And so, as the pack weaves around behind the safety car to get some heat and therefore grip in their tires, Helio checks behind him. And what he sees in right mirror, left mirror, right mirror, left mirror, is the broad white nose of a Team Penske Dallara-Chevrolet, and on it the big fat “12.”

  #$%^! How’s Power going to play this on the restart?

  The answer becomes clear from the drop of the green flag on Lap 187. This lead quartet fans out across the track, with the Ganassi cars on the high line, Castroneves in the middle, Power in the bottom lane. Will looks like he’s going past but Helio matches him and they complete that lap and the next, wheel to wheel, inches apart. And now they’re squabbling over the draft of Kanaan and Dixon who are, in stark contrast to the title-fighting Penske teammates, trying to work together and inch away. It’s astounding how quickly they’ve broken away from the others, as even Montoya and Carpenter have been taken aback by the frantic-looking race up front.

  At the start of Lap 189, Power stays at the bottom of the track while Castroneves floats to the very top. The momentum and the shorter line is with Power and on completing the pass, he drifts up the track to slot into third and catch the tow from the Ganassi cars. Going into Turn 3, he dives down from the high line to the long apex, which draws him alongside first Dixon and then Kanaan; again, the shorter line gives him the lead a
s they cross the line. Power’s gone from fourth to first in one lap and it’s his fastest lap of the race. In fact it’s the fastest lap of the race, and will remain so – a full-fat, full-throttle, fully absorbing two-mile stretch of action completed at 218.982 mph.

  So now Power’s earned himself a bonus point and, he hopes, messed with Castroneves’ head a little. But Will isn’t kidding himself. He knows he’ll scrub the life out of his tires way too early if he stays down low, and keeping the turns shallow by using the high line will eventually force him to cede the lead to the superior Ganassi cars. He hangs on in front for seven more laps, before Kanaan, then Dixon, then Carpenter ease past. Power’s got nothing for them and he’s in no mood to fight a trio who have nothing to lose. Will has everything to lose tonight, and keeping his adrenaline steady rather than heady has worked well thus far.

  There’s one potential complication to come, and that’s the final pit stop, but the No. 12 crew has been smooth all evening. Castroneves, meanwhile, hasn’t given up, but he’s slipped to fifth, unable to make any gains on his fourth-placed teammate, and his pre-race hopes are dissipating into the Californian darkness. He’s running out of time and, like Power, his car’s only Ganassi-strong for the first ten to fifteen laps after fitting new tires. Without another yellow to bunch the field and allow him to possibly exploit that advantage and get to the front, he’s toast.

  With much on his mind, therefore, the three-time Indy 500 winner but three-time championship runner-up pits on Lap 216. Unfortunately, having committed to the pit-in lane, he briefly wobbles back onto the banking, before returning to the horizontal. His indiscretion has not been missed by Race Control; he’s going to get a drive-through penalty. It’s a fast pit stop, which will vault him ahead of Power – but the extra penalty-induced stop will nullify his crew’s efficiency.

  Yet just when that should give Power an easy run to the checkers, a tiny error is made on pit lane. Will has asked for a quarter-turn of wing to be taken out to neutralize the car, which has been getting fidgety at the rear again. However, a miscommunication sees the team instead crank on a quarter-turn, which will pin down the nose that little bit more. He feeds onto the track behind Helio, but as the tires come up to temperature on his second lap around and he starts to lean on the grip, suddenly the tail of the car drifts right, unable to follow the trajectory ascribed by the front wheels. It’s a heart-stopping moment in which Will needs the full width of the track through Turn 4 to gather it up at 210 mph . . .