The Sheer Force of Will Power

by David Malsher

  “But when they were both doing dirt cars, I remember Nick tipped his car over in one race and crashed another time, so eventually we had to pension off his little Datsun. Yup, Nick definitely didn’t leave a circuit with any questions unanswered . . .”

  Owen giggles. “That was Nick’s problem,” he says. “He was fast, but he was real tough on equipment to get that speed. He was driving very much on instinct, flat-out all the way, whereas Will was trying to improve all the time – very thoughtful about the mechanical side of things, but blindingly fast.

  “The other car that Will raced at that time was a Holden VH Commodore, which had a 202 cubic inch 6-cylinder engine, and we’d added an aluminum head and triple carburetors. He and Bob shared that in sports sedan racing, and I’d say that again everyone got to see that this kid was a cut above the rest. He was very fast and very aggressive, and I think Will and Bob won just about every race they entered in that car.

  “Will wasn’t perfect though. One time I could see we had a problem with second gear and didn’t have time to fix it before the race, so I told him, ‘Okay, start off in first, go straight to third and just spend the whole race in third and fourth. The engine’s got a load of torque so you’ll be fine.’

  “So off he goes at the start: first, second . . . and sure enough the lever jams in there and he has to come back to the pits. I’m saying, ‘What did I tell you?! First, third, fourth is all you’ve got.’ He says, ‘Yes, yes, sorry, sorry.’ He was kicking himself, while I’m crawling under the car and trying to free up this lever so he’s got more than just second gear. It felt like it was taking forever. Finally I free it, and off Will goes . . . and he still wins the race!”

  These early days in sedans provided Will with valuable experience of competition, car control and mechanical knowledge (more of this in the next chapter), but tin-tops weren’t what he’d had his heart set on for over a decade.

  “Nah, it was all about Formula 1 before I was ten, and then when Indy cars came to Surfers Paradise, I got hooked on them too,” says Will. “Powerful engines, superfast, and some of the best racing, too, on a wide variety of circuits. That was true of F1 as well, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Plus I suppose with Dad doing Formula 2, I was used to that style of car being my definition of a racecar. Fat slick tires, exposed cockpit, bodywork where everything looked like it served a purpose – nothing was put there for style. Well, F1 and Indy car were the ultimate for that. And the drivers were dudes, too. You had Senna, Prost, Piquet, and Mansell in F1, and the Andrettis, Al Unser Jr, Fittipaldi, and Rick Mears in Indy cars. Classic times for both series.

  “The thing I really loved was when they showed onboard footage – Indy car showed it more often than F1, from what I remember – and it was addictive. The acceleration, the wrestling with the steering, the car control, the big front tires out in front, the ridiculous late-braking they could do . . . magic.

  “Anyway, Dad had always been trying to get my brother Nick to come and drive his Formula Ford, and Nick was just not that interested by then. He was digging the social scene and doing breakdancing competitions and stuff, so I think Dad gave up on that idea. Then one day, after I’d been doing well in the Datsun and the Commodore, Dad asked if I wanted to have a test in the Formula Ford. Well, I don’t think I could have said ‘Yes’ any quicker. Shit yeah, I wanted a go. And it was a pivotal moment, because it was absolutely as cool as I’d expected a single-seater racecar to be, and actually during that first test, I decided I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.”

  Chapter 3

  Breaking it and making it

  “I know it sounds like a cliché but it’s true – I honestly remember that first Formula Ford test like it was yesterday,” says Will, a wistful note to his voice. “That feeling is unforgettable. I mean, I liked competing in the sedans on the dirt tracks, but an open-wheel car was something else; it felt exciting even just lapping all by yourself. Gearshifts were so fast and you didn’t even need to use the clutch – just a slight lift of the throttle and bang it into gear.

  “The steering was amazing compared with a sedan. It was heavy but precise so every little bit of angle made a difference. Watching F1 and Indy car onboards I’d seen how the steering wheel shook when a driver hit curbs and bumps, like it was trying to rip the wheel out of his hands, especially if he only had one hand on the wheel because he was changing gear. Well, that’s what I suddenly felt like I was doing. This was at Lakeside Raceway, at Lake Kurwongbah near Brisbane, and that’s a track with no slow corners, so the car felt really fast, especially because you sit so low down in an open-wheeler. It was so cool. Probably the highlight of my life up to that point.”

  While Bob remembers Will as taking to the car “like a duck to water” and being “right on it, despite Lakeside being a quick track,” Will – ever the self-critic – recalls his technique falling a long way short of his enthusiasm.

  “A good time around Lakeside in a Formula Ford was 55 seconds,” he says, “and I got down to that on my first or second run, so that was cool. But when my dad told me, I said, ‘Really? I wasn’t even trying. I’ll go and push harder.’ So I did, and then came back in. He looked at me and said, ‘Nice one, son, you’re doing 56s!’

  “He said, ‘Just try backing it up a bit going into the corners, not unsettling the car by braking hard and late,’ and that was my first lesson in single-seater driving right there. Just because it feels like you’re going fast, doesn’t mean you are, so I started thinking about technique from that day.”

  “I think overdriving a Formula Ford after you’ve been in sedan racing is pretty natural,” says Bob. “The important thing for me to see that day was that Will was not daunted by those cars at all. Not at all. So after that it was about gaining experience and improving technique. And I tell you, he caught on very quick. Right away in the Queensland State Formula Ford championship he was a frontrunner, and then in 1998 he combined that with a couple of National rounds. But he was kind of wild and that season was expensive in terms of parts.”

  “Yeah, for my first National Formula Ford race, I qualified fourteenth,” says Will, “which was really good for a debutant in the deep competition at that level. I was running a 1992 Swift, so it wasn’t the most up-to-date machinery. But my main problem was that I fell off the track in the race from just pushing too hard. I wanted to beat everyone but honestly didn’t truly know how much technique was involved at that stage. I’d drive each corner fast, but I wouldn’t always be quick, wouldn’t put it all together on one killer lap. I think the technique that Dad had taught me – to be smooth and brake earlier so I’d be back on the throttle through the apex – would sometimes go out the window once I was seeing red and going for it.

  “Anyway, Dad wasn’t impressed that I was being erratic and crashing a lot; he didn’t think I was worth putting money into. And to be honest, he was right – it was probably too early for him to think about buying me newer equipment until I stopped screwing up and really committed myself.”

  The turning point was 1999, when the teenager started to get into all aspects of racing – including the technical side.

  “As kids, me and Nick had always worked on our own karts,” recalls Will, “changing sprockets and engines and so on. Well 1999 was the year I really started doing that with the Swift: I’d strip it down and rebuild it myself. Engine changes, gear ratios, alignment – everything mechanical on it was pretty much down to me, and that’s when I stopped crashing, because suddenly it was me having to do all the repairs! Funny how that works . . . I became very smooth with the gearbox, and could make a set of gearbox dog rings last a whole season.

  “So that was the basics. Then I started hanging around guys who were building cars and engines, and I’d watch them and listen to what they were doing and why they were doing it. I suppose up to that point, I hadn’t really appreciated that Formula Ford is not one of those series where you buy a car, and apart from changing tires and oil and filling it with fuel,
that’s it. I discovered you could refine it and make little modifications to suit a track or a driving style – I started realizing how many details were involved to fine-tune it. That was really interesting to me – totally absorbing, actually.

  “Well, I didn’t have any money to pay people to do it for me, so I had to get in and do it myself, and to do that, I needed to understand what the car was doing and why. So I just started reading more and more books and technical magazines and so on, and listening to the other guys at the track. Springs and dampers, gear ratios, corner weights, ride heights – everything, pretty much. And then to check I’d learned it right, I’d ask Trevor [Owen], and he was encouraging, didn’t behave like I was treading on his toes. He agreed that it was a good idea if, instead of just relaying feedback, I was able to translate what I was feeling into actual facts and make suggestions about improving the car.”

  “That was the funny thing about Will,” says Owen. “However carried away he got on the track with the Formula Ford – and he would have the odd wild moment – he was actually mechanically very good on equipment. He wouldn’t wear out parts. I’d noticed that with the old Commodore, and I realized this was because he was reading everything he could lay his hands on and increasing his mechanical knowledge. It got to the point with the Commodore where he’d say he wanted it stiffer at this end, softer at that end, he wanted this, he wanted that, and he’d back it up with reasons why. And they made sense.

  “Well with the Formula Ford, he took that to the next level. He’d just tear the car apart and see how everything interacted with everything else, and he was full of questions, and he took notice of every answer you told him. He’d show me passages from books – technical books but also books about racing techniques – and see if I agreed with his thoughts about this suspension geometry, or this setting for the tire pressures. Then in his head he started putting things together to see how the technical side interacted with the driving technique. That year, 1999, he really matured.”

  “I was well impressed,” admits Bob. “Will very quickly became better at that stuff than me, and I still remember him and his buddies Gary Hamilton and Tom Horton stripping that Swift down to its bare chassis and then rebuilding it from scratch. And that meant he didn’t need me so much; all I’d give him was the car and my tow-car, and he, Gary and Tom would head off to race meetings themselves. He could handle all the responsibilities himself – preparing the car, racing the car and bringing it back in one piece. Well, sometimes with a few bits missing! But anyway, he won a few races in the 1999 Queensland State Formula Ford Championship running the car virtually by himself – certainly without my help, anyway – and I thought, ‘Right, that’s the breakthrough.’ It was time to buy him a team-type ride, so I put the money in to get him a Spectrum chassis for 2000, and I contacted Mike Borland of Borland Racing to run it for us.”

  “That was it, man,” says Will, nodding slowly. “That was the dream opportunity and that’s when I started taking it seriously. If Dad was prepared to put that much faith in me, I wasn’t going to throw that away. I mean, even back when I was racing dirt cars in 1996 and 1997, I wouldn’t hang out with my brothers, drinking and smoking the night before. I’d be thinking, ‘I want to be the sharpest I can be for the race.’ But now with this chance, I took another step up – stopped going to the pub altogether, started swimming every day, got really fit, watched what I ate.”

  “Total determination, complete focus and sensational car control – those are the things I think of first when I remember Will,” says Mike Borland. “Even the first time I met him, I went round to meet with Bob and I was watching Will on this racing simulation game, and he’d just play it over and over and over. He was looking for that perfect lap all the time. Absolutely anal about it.”

  Putting that into practice on the track wasn’t the work of a moment, though.

  “My first test in the Spectrum was a disaster,” recalls Will. “It was at Winton Raceway, a nice 1.8-mile track two hours outside of Melbourne with fast and slow corners. I didn’t have a lot of experience; all I knew about was the Swift chassis, which was very forgiving and had been pretty good for me because I was still a bit of an overdriver. The Spectrum was a different animal, more nervous. You really had to drive that car smoothly to get a good time from it, so I was slow. I remember Dad telling me I was so slow that he thought he could have gone quicker in it, and he was probably right.”

  Says Bob: “I could tell Mike was thinking that this Will Power kid wasn’t good enough yet, and he was looking at the other Spectrum driver, Nick Agland, and thinking he was going to be his main man for the season. So Will and I went to the local track at Warwick and just started testing and testing, and Will went back to Borland a totally different driver.”

  Or as Will puts it, “I didn’t have any real technique before – I just drove on instinct – so it didn’t take me long to unlearn what I’d been doing and relearn correctly.”

  Borland recalls, “Will was pretty green about what he wanted from the car, so we really tried to work with him on the data, showing how he could improve. That was his first time using data, and he really threw himself into that, once we demonstrated how what he was feeling in the car translated to what we were seeing on the computer and on the timesheets.”

  “From that point, honestly, I never stopped thinking about racing,” says Will. “I really knuckled down because for the first time in my life I wanted to put everything into something. If I’d been that way at school, I would have been a straight-A student, but with racing, it didn’t feel like work at all. This is what I was born to do – that’s how it felt at the time – and so I was thinking about racing and how to improve myself 24/7. I was taking books out of libraries about driving techniques, and looking up technical stuff on the internet.

  “And then I was racing multiple times most weeks. I remember weekends when I’d be testing Formula Ford on Friday, on the Gold Coast go-karting on Saturday, and then Sunday doing 100-lappers on the dirt. And I’d be running all the cars, stripping them down and rebuilding. I had an old Holden Commodore wagon and I had a trailer for each of these cars, and I’d just hit the road with my best mate, Gary [Hamilton].”

  Success was difficult to judge. He won the 2000 Queensland State Formula Ford title in the old Swift, but Will admits the field wasn’t that deep. At National level in the Spectrum he recalls crashing too much, something Borland believes triggered some confusion about Will’s approach.

  “Will had a couple of big crashes early on,” he says, “so after that he tried to be more cautious, and let the races come to him . . . and that’s when he had a huge crash! At Phillip Island he went barrel-rolling down the straight, messed up his back, and ended up in hospital. Well that really shook his confidence, because now he didn’t know how to be – aggressive or patient – and I’ve seen signs of that occasionally in Indy car racing, too, where he’s caught trying to decide how much fight is too much fight.

  “So he ended the 2000 season seventh in the championship, and then I think there was a six-week break before we raced at Surfers Paradise, supporting the CART Indy car event. And he came back and qualified on pole by something like 1.5 seconds! He’d gone away and got his head together.”

  Having been on the negative side of whether it was worth funding his son’s career any further, Bob came to accept that some of Will’s problems in 2000 had come from trying to compensate for a down-on-power engine, and that performance at Surfers which resulted in victory was too startling to ignore. It was time to make an alternative arrangement – and that would involve running the car as a family concern. With Trevor Owen at a crossroads in his own career, he gladly came on board full-time, as did the aforementioned Gary Hamilton, a friend of a friend Will had met at a party who was interested in cars and racing, and who has since gone on to become a “best mate”, in Will’s own words.

  “Will had felt the engine he’d been using was a bit down on power,” recalls Hamilton, “and it wa
s quite well known within the paddock that Rick Kelly [who’d go on to become V8 Supercar champion in 2006] had this strong engine. I mean, at those levels of horsepower, every little thing can make the difference between running first or second every race or running fourth or fifth. So Will got this idea of leasing the engine. But Peter Verheyen, who’d run Kelly, wouldn’t lease just the engine; Will and his dad had to buy the whole car, which was a Stealth – basically, a modified 1995 Van Diemen. So they sold the Spectrum and used the money to buy this slightly older car but with a better engine for the 2001 season. And we prepared it ourselves – Will, Bob, Trevor Owen, and myself.”

  Will Power’s chief opposition in that 2001 season would come from Will Davison, a third-generation driver from one of Australia’s most celebrated racing families. His grandfather, Lex Davison, had been a four-time winner of the Australian Grand Prix in the 1950s, while his father, Richard, had won the Australian F2 title in 1980. Although Will D has gone on to become one of the top V8 Supercar drivers, back in 2001 he was sharing Will P’s dream of Formula 1 glory. Like Power, Davison had spent 2000 winning the state-level Formula Ford championship (in Davison’s case, Victoria) while finding his feet at National level. For 2001, he was driving a works Van Diemen run by Garry Rogers/Sonic Motorsport.

  “You know, obviously we were rivals but, looking back, I felt there was always respect there,” says Davison. “I felt proud that I had been right on the pace in Formula Ford in 2000 when I started and could match Will, who’d obviously been doing some Formula Ford racing a couple of years earlier. But on the other hand, when I saw his operation, it was fairly basic – it was just him, his dad and a couple of mates – so you had to admire what he’d been able to achieve so far. And in 2001 that was pretty much confirmed to me: this guy could drive! It was a fairly amazing year, we had some fantastic battles, and I thought, yeah, if this guy doesn’t get himself in the wars too much but can keep that speed, he could go on and be really big in the sport.”