For the ninth consecutive season of IndyCar Series racing, Will Power has won a race, and you could make the case that Saturday’s victory in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis was his most important. Sure, some will point to his first win on an oval or the back-to-back wins last year at Milwaukee and Sonoma that went a long way to securing his maiden IndyCar Series championship after so many – too many! – runner-up finishes.
I’d rate Power’s win on Saturday higher than those triumphs and all others. Why? Because it was a win at the venerable Indianapolis Motor Speedway and those don’t come often. Some of the best drivers to ever climb behind the wheel of an IndyCar have tried for years and years, decades, in some cases, and haven’t gone to victory lane at the sport’s spiritual home.
Finally, Will Power can strike his name off of that list. He’s been close before, cruelled by some drama or another more times than I want to remember, but everything went his way on Saturday, and he got to climb up to that famous podium rostrum on the front straight at Indy and receive the winner’s trophy.
Considering the size of our country and how hard it is for even our most talented pilots to break into European and North American racing, it’s pretty impressive that we can say Australian drivers have won events at all the big racetracks in the world: Le Mans, Monaco, Daytona (the Rolex 24), Sebring and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Sure, it wasn't the fabled Indianapolis 500, but Power can certainly claim all the momentum in the world heading into Monday’s first practice session for the ninety-ninth running of the 500, a spectacle like few others in racing, and if momentum means anything – and I believe it does – then Power will be a threat next weekend in qualifying and the week after in the sport’s biggest race.
On Saturday, Power was basically unstoppable. He led from the start, had the good fortune to look into his rear-view mirror as he threaded into the first turn and see two drivers who would have been amongst his biggest challengers involved in a chaotic melee. Scott Dixon, the New Zealander who had qualified second, was punted by 3-time Indianapolis 500 champion Helio Castroneves, necessitating a long stop and lengthy repairs, and the same incident took out Josef Newgarden, the Tennessean who won the last IndyCar Series race two weeks ago, down in Alabama. The caution flag thrown after that accident was the only one in the 82-lap contest.
It was a stroke of luck, but the way Power drove, he might not even have needed it. In leading 72 of 82 laps, his win was one of total domination. The handful of laps he wasn't at the front came during the pit stop cycles, but, on each occasion, after various hopeful strategies played out, the Queenslander emerged, once more, at the head of the field. The #1 Team Penske Chevrolet was a rocket.
Surprisingly, Power’s greatest challenge came not from his Team Penske stablemates, Castroneves, Juan Pablo Montoya or Simon Pagenaud, but from perhaps the unlikeliest of contenders, Graham Rahal, the son of former Indy 500 champion Bobby, driving for a one-car operation with a Honda engine, known to be well down on straight-line speed in comparison to the Chevrolet brigade.
Illustrating just how poor Honda was, the failed to place even one car inside the top ten after Friday qualifying, and Rahal started from seventeenth. Apparently, those Honda engines perform better on race day than in qualifying, and a smart strategy, mixed with Rahal’s ability to hustle his car around the fast, physical IMS road course, saw him cut through the field to second, and seriously challenge Power in the closing stages. Rahal's was the drive of the race, and easily the biggest surprise.
For the second straight race, Rahal recovered from a poor starting position to finish second, and prove that two weeks’ ago at Barber Motorsports Park wasn't a fluke. The last few years have been tough for Rahal, but some major changes at Rahal Racing, including his father, Bobby, stepping down from the pit box, seem to be paying huge dividends. Rahal has consistently been the strongest Honda runner this year.
In victory lane, Power, the fifth winner in as many IndyCar Series races in 2015, admitted that the race was probably the most physical he’d done, and indicated that he was fully focused on winning the Indianapolis 500 now that he has a series championship under his belt. He’s said he wants to be atop the timesheets four sessions throughout the month: qualifying for the Grand Prix of Indianapolis, the Grand Prix of Indianapolis itself, Pole Day on the oval next weekend and, of course, triumphing in the 99th Indianapolis 500. He’s fifty percent of the way there already.
Power’s Team Penske colleague Juan Pablo Montoya came home in third, holding off Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais and American Charlie Kimball, who followed Rahal through the pack, turning a fourteenth place start into a fifth place finish for the four-pronged Chip Ganassi Racing attack. Unbelievably, for a squad that features Dixon and Tony Kanaan, both Indianapolis 500 champions and regular IndyCar Series race winners, Kimball was their highest-finishing driver. Two Americans in the top ten is never a bad thing for a series struggling for mainstream popularity in America.
The highest finishing rookie was Stefano Coletti in eighth. Scott Dixon recovered to finish tenth. A.J. Foyt’s Takuma Sato was the only other Honda in the top ten, finishing in ninth, and Josef Newgarden never recovered from the opening-lap incident, scored a lap down in twentieth at the end.
It was a good start to the Month of May for Will Power. Here’s hoping he continues his domination when we get to the business end of proceedings.
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