Racing can’t resist this comeback story
There’s a simple reason Will Power will win the Verizon IndyCar Series championship: It’s just what racing wants.
Certainly, Simon Pagenaud has done virtually everything right through 15 races to deserve a 43-point margin entering the final race of the season Sunday at Sonoma Raceway. Credit is due.
The path his Team Penske teammate has taken to Northern California has been a cart path of falling anvils and viper pits. Racing is a cruel game of selection that routinely disgorges the deserving. And recently, it seems fond of a good tale.
Kyle Busch came back from devastating injuries to his leg and foot last year to win the Sprint Cup title by November.
Jeff Gordon advanced to that series’ final in his last race as a full-time driver at NASCAR’s highest level.
Tony Stewart now will have the same chance, reversing several seasons of ill performance, after winning for the first time in three years.
So Pagenaud and his season of meticulous performances are noble but don’t sizzle like Power’s joyride.
Power’s is a route that has become all too pocked by blips and unfortunate circumstance. There were the three consecutive seasons in which he lost the points lead in the final race. There was the emotion that seemed to undo him. This year he entered preseason testing complaining of ill health and arrived at Sebring International Raceway an off-putting shade of ashen. An inner-ear infection and learning to cope with a food allergy were sapping him.
Power crashed in an early practice in the opener in St. Petersburg, Fla., was diagnosed with a concussion and forced to sit out a race he had won twice. The concussion wasn’t, which is good, but the loss of points was not. Power gritted on, but his predilection to fret and force would certainly finish him, so the thinking went, when he reeled off four wins in six races to make it a game.
Then he was wrecked by Charlie Kimball in the most recent race at Watkins Glen International, saw his deficit to Pagenaud almost double and initially failed a post-race concussion test. Gray matter and fate relented, and he was cleared to race for the final this week.
So here he is, viable, back at the track where a crash with Nelson Philippe left him with a broken back and a career in question in 2009, looking for that great big scale to balance Sunday.
But there’s more than karma at play here. Power is good at Sonoma, outstanding, really. He has won three times in seven tries. Pagenaud has a best finish of third there in 2014.
All of this is shaping up very Scott Dixon-esque. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver vaulted from third in the standings to the championship on tiebreakers over Juan Pablo Montoya last season at Sonoma to ruin Montoya’s season of crunching excellence.
It’s simply unfortunate for Pagenaud. Racing is into a page-turner right now.