Caring less is doing more for IndyCar leader
DETROIT – The IndyCar driver, whose most memorable moment of his 18-year career is flashing double-birds to race control, is leading the series points race and Will Power says his secret is simply not caring anymore.
It’s no longer beating himself up when he spins in qualifying and is forced to start near the back. It’s no longer feeling like he has to start up front to win. It’s coming away relatively pleased with a 15th-place finish in the Indianapolis 500, a race that took the Aussie 11 tries to win. It’s the ability to throw his hands up, shrug his shoulders and move on from blistering blows delivered by the racing gods that don’t seem fair.
Power says it’s been a gradual educational process over the last couple of years, but whether that’s true – let’s not forget his tirade live on-air a year ago here at Detroit – we’re seeing it now for the first time. He still finds a way to work in his genuine annoyance with IndyCar’s blue flag rules every chance he gets. He’s not perfect.
“But life’s never meant to be perfect,” said a calm, open, honest, genuine Power, 41, as he sat in the Belle Isle media center after taking a celebratory dip in the James Scott Memorial Fountain following his win Sunday in IndyCar’s final street race on Belle Isle. “It never is perfect. It just isn’t. We’re just not built as humans to have perfection.
“I just think it’s getting older. You know you’re not always going to be around. Just being on this earth for 40 years, you’re like, ‘Well, that went pretty quick, so the next 20 where I’m still able to do stuff are going to fly by really fast.’ Who cares? Just enjoy it. I have a kid, and it’s the best thing ever.”
Power being introspective is nothing new. With a single question, you can get him on a tangent in a media bullpen, talking about aliens and conspiracy theories. Last year in Detroit, he derailed a Detroit press conference that ended with him jokingly saying he’d like to fight a NASCAR driver. Two years ago at Iowa, he took a post-race media Zoom from an ice bath. In a series with so many genuine, interesting personalities, Power is a true 1-of-1, but for nearly two decades, that’s been rooted so much in how much he cared.
It’s why his celebration of his 500 win in 2018 looked like an out-of-body experience after breaking through so much heartbreak, so many close calls. It’s why it was such a big deal when, after three consecutive years finishing runner-up in the title race (2010-12), Power held on down the stretch in 2014 and clinched his first (and still only) IndyCar title. In those three close calls, he took runnerup by a combined 26 points and finished 25th, 19th and 24th in the final races of those years, compared to eighth, second and fourth for the victors.
After that 2018 500, Power told IndyStar that he finally checked the final box that, if he stopped then and there, would leave him feeling complete. The three-plus seasons that followed marked one of the more relatively bleak times in Power’s Team Penske tenure. He had nearly as many finishes outside the top 15 (16) as podiums (20). In the nine seasons from 2010-18, only once did Power finish with fewer than three wins in a season. He totaled just five from 2019-21. His worst four finishes in the points with Penske have come in the last five years (fifth in 2017, 2019 and 2020 and ninth in 2021).
Yes, that flawless Power is still there on occasion. He’s still winning races. He still occasionally has the speed for pole, but as he explained Sunday, the series has in many ways passed by that old version of himself. Perhaps some of that’s age, but maybe more is the depth of a series that allows for seven pole-sitters and six winners in seven races. What he’s doing far better than anyone else in the series at the moment is that Scott Dixon-like contentment with not always being the best, not trying too hard and pushing things over the edge.
“Qualifying was disappointing Saturday, but I never qualify (well) here. It’s just the same as last year,” Power said Sunday. “When I used to qualify on pole very often and start in the front very often, you’re not racing in the pack much. Racing now, rarely am I right at the front in qualifying. No one is consistently, so you race around other cars, and I’ve gotten very good at that – just restarts and judging where you should be. That’s something I missed early on in my career because I was so fast.”
His 2020 featured some painfully timed yellow flags, a wheel literally coming off at Iowa and a did not finish (DNF) from the pole in the St. Pete finale. Last year only barely qualified for the 500 – and slapping the wall during his Last Row Shootout attempt to boot – as well as dropping from first to 20th in Detroit Race 1 when, on a late-race red flag restart, his car malfunctioned and he lost what should’ve been a win.
That Detroit disaster sent Power into that enraged, unhinged state we all expected but haven’t seen this year. Postrace, he said in the cockpit he was almost preparing himself for a late caution. A yellow would’ve bunched up the field and brought a surging Alexander Rossi, who was down 10 seconds or so with 10 laps to go but charging fast, onto Power’s rear wing. With the eventual winner nursing red tires that were falling apart at that point, he might’ve done well to achieve a top-five finish.
“But that was a possibility. That was the risk we took. We started 16th, so if that happened, I was going to be happy to hang onto a top-five and get good points,” Power said. “If you go back and look at the last two years, you’ll find some pretty ridiculous things that have happened that were out of my control, and I don’t know why they happened. Is it an attitude or a vibe thing that you give off with some of the mistakes we’ve made in the pits?
“I don’t know, but you get more relaxed as you get older. There’s not been a massive shift mentally, but certainly this year …”
And then Power trails off. “Let’s leave it at that. I’ll tell you after I retire. I don’t want to give too much away.”
But in a separate answer, he continues to elaborate.
“I’d say there’s freedom in not having to add to anything you’ve done. That’s the feeling I have. I could stop now, and I’d be satisfied with what I’ve done. Anything else you do is a bonus. You don’t have that pressure of, ‘I’m only two years into my career. I have to try and make a living out of this.’ It doesn’t matter. I could stop now and be OK, but I’m still trying to perform at a really high level, and I’m probably better than I ever have been. I’m just enjoying that and trying to extract the most out of it.”
It’s almost as if, in focusing on doing the best he can with what he has, rather than caring about whether that’s a pole or a podium or a win, those highly competitive days are coming to Power in spades. He has more top-four finishes (six) than he’s had in his career at this point in a season.
And that one race that wasn’t, the double-points Indy 500 last weekend? Power said he was legitimately “happy” to finish 15th. After jumping up from 11th to seventh on the first lap, the No. 12 Chevy drifted as far back as 30th midrace before he worked his way up and took what the day, his car and the field would give him. With it, he leads 500winner Marcus Ericsson by three points after Sunday. And after noting that on the podium Sunday, Power did have a brief moment where he lamented what his points lead would’ve been had his 15th-place finish been better.
But he caught himself. “That’s not bad. Some of the legit title contenders had a bad day, too,” he said. Like his Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin, who crashed with 50 laps to go and finished 29th. Or front row starter Rinus VeeKay, who crashed from secondplace early-on and took 33rd, it could’ve easily been worse for Power.
And that enlightenment is perhaps where this shift lies.
“I’m not disappointed with bad results anymore. It is what it is,” Power said. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, it’s not fair.’ Yeah it is. That’s life, and I’m extremely lucky to be doing what I’m doing. Just extremely fortunate I’m in this position to race cars and get paid for it. It’s insane, compared to what I could be doing. I could always be worse off.
“I’m just lucky.”