Saturday was a waste of time with nothing happening on track. IndyCar had scheduled the race in the height of the Southern California summer but had reasoned that was okay for an evening event, because no one was going to be sitting in the bleachers for hours getting heat stroke. For the drivers’ sakes, the race wouldn’t get the green flag until the sun had finally sunk behind the nearby mountains. Two years ago at this venue, they’d been driving blind down the back straight at 220 mph in the early stages of the race and it had been a miracle no accidents had occurred.
Power would have gladly settled for 500 miles this Saturday afternoon, merciless sun notwithstanding; it beat hanging around. Penske’s PR gurus had kept the drivers’ media and sponsor commitments to a minimum today, but that just meant more time to keep busy doing nothing. Power spent those hours trying to think only of the race rather than its signifiance, but that was an impossible task: how could he avoid wondering what it would feel like twenty-four hours from now if his dream were to come true? Three times in recent years he’d had that dream put on hold and thus spent the winter brooding over a missed opportunity and all those “If only . . .” moments from the season past. He couldn’t stand all that again.
Because those previous experiences of going into the season finale as a championship contender had ended only in excruciating disappointment, they were of no use to Power through this endless afternoon. He wanted – needed – a different outcome and so felt his input and output during this prologue had to be different. Having his mother there, over from Australia, was a welcome distraction. This was the first time in his entire racing career that Marg would see her son compete. (She’d also been at Sonoma the previous week, but had felt unwell after her fifteen-hour flight and so hadn’t gone to the track.) A naturally placid soul, Marg fitted in easily with the pre-race atmosphere of carefully suppressed anticipation created by Liz and her mother, Kathy, who are usually both emotional people, but who are also race veterans and know when to keep the atmosphere merely lukewarm.
And so now Power treads a fine line. He tries to resist the adrenaline surge because he doesn’t want to become agitated but, equally, he can’t let his mind slip into an artificially laid-back mode. In the past, that has led to overt caution and he can’t afford that now.
Yeah, now that’s a positive way to look at his lowly grid position: it removes some variables, makes his task and chosen methodology this evening more clear-cut. No guesswork about what pace to run, no dilemmas over how hard to fight. Instead, Power can focus on mounting a careful, clinical charge from the back of the grid knowing he has to finish in the top six if Castroneves wins. Reassuringly too, he knows he has the car to do it. The conditions from the previous evening’s practice session have given everyone a good idea of how their car will behave once the sun goes down, and while the Ganassi team looked strong, that’s as likely to hurt Castroneves as Power. Given the points situation, if Castroneves finishes only, say, third and also claims the remaining bonus points, Power can still clinch the title with eighteenth.
Now the time has come. Fist-bumps with crew members, clumsy handshakes and semi-embraces with Cindric and Faustino, a last kiss and private exchange of words with Liz. Then there’s the routine of slipping the earplugs in, pulling the balaclava down, sliding the helmet on, fastening the chin strap, making tiny adjustments for comfort, slithering into the cockpit, the team attaching his steering wheel, then fussing around and clipping the cockpit-surround in place. The babble of voices on pit road and the announcer aren’t completely muted but the volume’s way down now, thanks to the insulation provided by all his head gear. Will does radio checks with his spotter, CR Crews, way up on top of Auto Club Speedway’s hospitality suites, and with Cindric, down at pit exit. Both are vital as they’ll provide extra sets of eyes and ears. They come through loud and clear, no problem.
As the guest starter bellows the command – “Drivers, start your engines!” – all the pre-race conjecture melts into irrelevancy. For Will Power, it’s now all about what he does with his Dallara-Chevrolet DW12 Indy car for the next couple of hours. He knows his own capabilities – he won this race last year. He knows his car’s capabilities – it’s been fast all weekend. Contrary to what the media wrote, the demons Power needs to conquer tonight aren’t personal. They’re the thousand tiny things that could go against him: Fontana’s sandy, abrasive coating of dust that choked several engines the previous two years; a cross-threaded wheel nut or faulty refueling equipment causing a disastrously long pit stop; a badly timed caution period. Oh, and then there are also the crazies in the cockpits of twenty other cars just like his . . .
As the engines ahead of him on the pre-grid crescendo, Power ups the revs on the Chevy 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6, clicks the clutch paddle on the left side of the steering wheel, clicks the gearshift paddle on the right, gently releases his hold on the clutch, and smoothly heads off to face all those demons.
Chapter 2
Roots
Weather apart, that hot summer night in Fontana, California, was a lifetime and 7000 miles away from Will’s roots in Toowoomba, Australia. Since Will Power rose to prominence in Indy car racing and began to refer to his origins, it’s become common for people to assume from its name that Toowoomba is a tiny village out in the bush in the middle of nowhere. In fact, it’s a city whose population is well into six figures, and it’s only 80 miles west of Brisbane. Admittedly, a road trip between the two cities will reveal a whole lot of not much, but it’s certainly not Hicksville Central. In fact, Toowoomba Pasta has even earned a place on the Australia-themed Outback Steakhouse restaurant chain in America . . .
Anyway, it was in Queensland’s sixth-largest city that Robert and Margrett Power (hereafter known as ‘Bob’ and ‘Marg’) raised four sons – Kenneth, Nicholas, William, and Damien, in date-descending order. Now, destiny, in the pre-ordained sense of the word, is like astrology – utter nonsense devised to make supposedly learned people look wise after an event. Thus when Bob and Marg named their third son William Stephen Power after his great grandfather, it was a tribute to a relative, and not intended to decide the course of the child’s life. The fact that the original William Stephen Power was hooked on mechanical thrill-seeking and set a motorcycle speed record from Toowoomba to Brisbane in 1915 is pure coincidence; WS Power Jr’s career could have been in banking, politics, cookery . . . or (more likely) canvas, just like Bob, who loved racing but was too smart to try and turn it into an income-making career.
But that link between the family’s past and present racing stars is a neat one, whatever Marg thinks.
“I always used to call him William, because I was determined he wasn’t going to be known as ‘Will Power’,” she says. “I mean, who’d ever take that seriously? But eventually I gave up correcting people – ‘It’s William!’ – and it changed to Will. And I’ll have to admit, he’s made it work for him.”
She smiles as she recalls the 2014 IndyCar Series champion was “a lovely baby.”
“Being my third, I had practice from Kenneth and Nicholas before him, and they would cry and fuss quite a bit in the night. But with William, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Whenever I used to hear him stir, I’d go over to his crib and check on him, and he’d be lying on his back, quite happy. He’d just stare up at me, smiling. He was very, very content. And then as he grew up, I’d say he was a very quiet boy, probably because his older brother Nick – just two years apart – was the complete opposite, very talkative. In Will’s case, I’d always have to look around to see if he was even there. Those two were just close enough in age that Will tried to do everything Nick was doing, so maybe that was where his competitive streak came from.
“Ken was a fair bit older than the others, four years older than Nick, but all of them were good at playing together, messing around outside in the sand pit and playing with their toy cars and so on. On a nice summer’s day, I could have left them out in the yard for hours on end (I didn’t, of course!) and they
wouldn’t get themselves into trouble. In fact, at the end of a day, they’d still be doing the same things they were doing at the start of the day – again, very content, and also content in each other’s company.
“I don’t recall much fighting. Nick, in particular, was always full of energy and seemed to be able to spend all day pushing Will around doing laps of the yard in his little car. Will took full advantage of that, and was perfectly happy driving that car hour after hour.”
It was these same two, Nick and Will, who went with their father most often to watch him race in Australian Formula 2. Looking back some three decades later, Bob believes it was inevitable that eventually he’d end up buying them go-karts.
“Kids are very impressionable at that age,” he says, “and when I’d be going on long road trips down south, even as far down as Tasmania, they’d see me working on the car at home, both before and after a race, and they showed an interest. Then when the races were in Queensland, like at Surfers Paradise or Lakeside, they’d actually come with me and watch me race.
“It’s not something you plan,” continues Bob, who scored several podium (top-three) finishes in Australian F2 in the mid-1980s, falling frustratingly short of winning a race. “But yeah, I was pleased to see them taking an interest and it didn’t surprise me at all. My father wasn’t a racer, he was just a serious fan, and when I was young, he used to take us kids to a lot of races, which is how I got into it enough to want to compete myself. I think interest in certain sports gets passed down the generations quite easily.”
And Bob was only too pleased to nurture this interest, as Marg explains: “In our home, the garage below quickly became packed with racing cars, go-karts and racing parts for every conceivable car in the racing genre. The whole thing took on its own momentum.
“Let me tell you, racing isn’t the career I’d have ever chosen for Will, and I’ll never be comfortable with it. I come from a family of teachers and I trained as a nurse – so the idea of my sons and Bob doing something dangerous just made me shudder. You see, I knew nothing about racing before I met Bob, and then one of our first dates was going to the Toowoomba Demolition Derby at the showground, so you can imagine why I didn’t think much of racing! But even now I’ve learned about real racing, I still get very anxious. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that Will is satisfied and has done well, but I can’t say I’m happy about what he does for a living. I can’t rest easy.
“You know, I don’t suppose Will has told you that he’s really quite musical – all of my kids are – and he played the trumpet, really quite well. I can still see him and this other lad performing a duet in a school concert, and I was so proud. I had dreams, but as a family, we had motor racing . . .”
As a school pupil, Will found little to spark his interest, but he was into English, and particularly art – so much so that he took extra lessons outside of school.
“Yes, that was a family thing, passed down the generations,” says Marg, “so I took Will to see my old art teacher, and she was really impressed, particularly with his portraits. He used to work really hard at art because it interested him, and he kept it up for a long time. But the other things he was supposed to focus on at school, well, typical of kids that age, if he didn’t care he didn’t really put the effort in. Then from the age of twelve he started becoming a bit of a rebel and getting into trouble at school, so we sent him to a boarding school.”
“What were they thinking?!” exclaims Will. “Boarding school was never going to help me behave better! The thing that pissed me off was that Nick and I had started racing karts from seven or eight years old and I was beginning to get really good for my age group by the time I was sent away. We weren’t taking it that seriously yet – we weren’t focused on it – but being forced to stop racing was frustrating. And it didn’t improve my education at all – I was still a bad kid.
“The month I turned fifteen, I had a massive fight with my dad, and he said, ‘Screw this, you might as well just come and work for me and do an apprenticeship.’
“I don’t know if that was so he could keep a closer eye on me or he needed an extra pair of hands at work, or because he just didn’t want to see me wasting my life and not getting any better at school.
“So I worked for his wholesale confectionery place first, taking orders, stacking shelves, driving forklift trucks. I was crazy on those things. I could unload one of the big freight trucks so fast, and the floor of the warehouse was pretty grippy so I’d deliberately corner really hard and get it up on two wheels. Great fun.
“But I guess Dad figured that wasn’t really the point, and he transferred me to his canvas shop. I’d make tents, car covers, awnings, canopies – always something different, so it was actually quite interesting. We were custom builders so each thing was tailored to fit a customer’s requirements. If someone came in and said they wanted a cover for a particular car, maybe a rare classic, you’d have to go and measure all the different dimensions for this tonneau cover so it was a good fit, and I became pretty handy at then making it, and making it fast.”
“He did,” agrees Marg, “and I think he took pride in his work because it was a form of art. I also wonder if it sharpened his hand–eye coordination. It definitely became a competitive thing, too, because he wanted to be the fastest at doing the job properly. So I think his father was quite encouraged, too, because until Will showed some real talent at racing, Bob wanted Nick and Will to one day run that company, and that made sense because I think they would have run it well. They’re both self-motivated and conscientious, and they both take responsibilities seriously. Will never does anything with less than 100 per cent commitment.”
But it was this same outlook that turned a hobby into something a bit more serious for Will, once he became addicted to the adrenaline kick of racing. At sixteen he started competing in the junior class of dirt-track cars, which were beefed-up sedans.
“It was kind of like rallycross, I suppose,” says Will. “Places like Toowoomba, Warwick, Ipswich, Millmerran and Stanthorpe had these tracks on their outskirts. They were between 0.8 and 1.2 kilometers [half-mile to three-quarter-mile] and were mainly dirt, but there was a bit of asphalt, too. Carnell Raceway in Stanthorpe, Queensland, was like that – the main straight and Turn 1 were paved and then it was off into dirt for the rest of the lap.
“In the junior category most people, including me, were using an old Datsun 1200 coupe. You weren’t allowed to lock the diff, and you had to take it through tech inspection beforehand, but apart from that it was pretty casual. It was true grassroots racing in that we took the racing seriously but nothing else. Real fun times.”
“That’s about right,” says Trevor Owen, who’d been Bob’s chief (only!) mechanic for his F2 and F3 cars, and who started running the dirt cars for Will. “I remember it as bush, flies, hamburgers and great racing.”
Will’s debut in the junior category was inauspicious – something that seems to unite a great many racers who go on to become high achievers. Having inadvertently crushed an exhaust pipe while taking the Datsun off the trailer, the engine was choked up and its driver found himself severely lacking in power.
“He was dog slow,” says Bob bluntly, “and I remember thinking, ‘Shit, he’s got a long way to go.’ We had no idea there was a mechanical problem until after.”
But from this stumbled first step at the big-time in small-time racing, Will went on to become a regular winner.
Owen was deeply impressed with how quickly his new young charge evolved.
“Right away, Will was at the front,” he says. “The race that I remember best was at Millmerran, about 60 miles southwest of Toowoomba. We were in the Production category because it allowed a bit of work on the engine, carburetors, suspension, and so on. But this day they put all the classes together in a 100-lap endurance race – we were up against six- and eight-cylinder cars – and Will just carved his way to the front, and by the end of the race he’d almost lapped the entire field twice! It w
as one of the most exciting races I’ve ever been involved in and right there I knew he was something special. It was such a dominant win the officials were convinced something was wrong in the lap counting or whatever and they wanted to take a lap off him. Obviously that would mean he still won, but Will was furious that they’d mess around with the results like that. He was only sixteen or whatever, but he has never put up with anything false or anything where he thinks himself or others have been wronged. He yelled at them, ‘Your problem is you’ve never seen anyone of my caliber!’ and he just turned on his heel and we left.”
Interestingly, Marg recalls her husband used to think Nick was the better driver: “I think maybe it was because Nick had more experience, being two years older. He’d obviously been driving on the road for longer, as well as racing. But his heart wasn’t in it, from what I heard. He just didn’t have the concentration or dedication, whereas Will was very disciplined in improving himself.”
“Yeah, Nick would have been a really good driver,” asserts Bob. “He was a real take-no-prisoners, no-holds-barred kinda racer. Will was always playing catch-up, like he had throughout his life, I suppose. Those two would compete with each other on tricycles, then push-bikes, trail bikes, mini motorbikes, so racing was a big part of their playtime, and because Nick had the size and power advantage, Will had to work hard for any victory.
The Sheer Force of Will Power Page 3