“Yup, that was a good year,” agrees Power. “Basically Davison and I used to just disappear into the distance, and sometimes Jamie Whincup [V8 Supercars’ latest legend] would be with us, sometimes not. Then the deciding moments in the championship were Oran Park, where some little thing got loose in my gearbox and it broke, and then my Stealth wasn’t competitive in Queensland, my home race. That was when Will wrapped up the title. I was pissed, obviously, but I tried to look positively at it and I felt at least me and Davo had made a bit of a name for ourselves with our battles. I felt that could open doors.”
Despite success coming more regularly now, things weren’t always great between Will and Bob Power.
“Bob’s a brilliant man,” says Hamilton, “a self-made businessman and he can drive a bit, too, even now in his sixties. But he could also be crazy because he always had a hundred thoughts going through his head at one time. To give you an example, there was the time he tried to kill me. We were pulling apart one of these big engine hoists, and it’s a two-man job but, while we’re doing it, he lets go of his side of it and it comes crashing down on my head and there’s blood coming out from the side of my face. Turns out, while we were dismantling this thing, Bob was looking around and spotted something that he needed to remember to pack in the trailer, and he’d simply responded to that thought and walked off to do it, totally forgetting what he was doing at that moment. So that’s the kind of guy Bob is. And, by coincidence, it was coming home from that race meeting that I had to stop a punch-up in the car between Bob and Will. Man, it was hard to travel with them for ten hours, I can tell you.”
Whatever their differences, and however much Will shows clear signs of his mother’s genes in his thoughtful responses to questions, the burning desire to succeed in racing came from his father. It caused friction, yes, but it also united them, and that showed on track to everyone.
Says Davison: “It’s pretty rare through your career – especially in junior series, where you have to constantly believe you’re the best – that you end up openly acknowledging your respect for your fiercest rival. In fact, the people I feel like that about, I can count on the fingers of one hand. And Will is one of them. At the time, I think there was a belief that he was fast but wild, but whenever I heard that, I’d be saying, ‘Nah, I’ve raced him. The guy’s phenomenal.’ I think the thing that stood out for me was not just his pace and his car control but also his racecraft. You can find a ton of drivers out there who are fast because they’re brave and have quick reflexes, but when you race them, they make some stupid decisions – they turn in on you, they don’t leave you room, and they often do it so bad that they screw up the race for you and themselves, and so someone slower comes through and wins! But Will was hard, fast, relentless, and smart. I consider myself a pretty smart racer, but he was always on to all my tricks!”
If there was one move that doesn’t seem so smart in retrospect, it was both Wills’ decision to head down to Sandown, after the title had been settled in Davison’s favor. It was an expensive trip, even if it did allow them to form an amusing bond . . .
Says Power: “Dad had told me, ‘Why bother? You’re only going to finish second in the championship.’ But I said, no, this is what I want to do. I’ll go see if I can get another win. And so me and Gary went down . . . and I wrote the car off, and Davo had a big accident, kinda because of me! What happened was that I’d been rolling to the grid for the first race, and broke a driveshaft, and so that allows Will to disappear into the distance by himself . . . and then he crashes. Afterwards I asked him what went wrong, and he said, ‘I lost concentration because I didn’t have you all over my ass like I normally do!’
“So for the second race, we’re both starting from the back of the grid – pretty embarrassing for the supposed top drivers in Formula Ford that year. Anyway, it’s pissing wet, no one can see a thing, and there’s a crash at the start and I drive straight into what I think is just spray. Unfortunately, it’s full of cars . . .”
“Both stories completely true!” says Davison. “Honestly, we’d had a year that was so intense, constantly starting 1-2, running 1-2, finishing 1-2. With Will losing his driveshaft, I rolled onto the front row by myself, and then during the race I made a clumsy mistake, hitting a curb too hard, which spun me into the wall. So we both had a shocker and had to start from the back of the next race and Will managed to wipe all four corners off his car.”
Face to face and wheel to wheel, Power and Davison had spent an interesting season, each clearly respecting the other, but according to Will P’s girlfriend of the time, Kerry Fenwick, there were times when he’d express some aggravation at his resource deficit relative to Davison.
“Will [Power] recognized Will Davison was a very good driver, but he also felt that he was one of the guys – like Jamie Whincup, Marcus Marshall and the Kelly brothers – who had money. They had the latest equipment and the proper teams of mechanics and engineers helping them out, whereas Will had a modified but older car, and him and Trevor did all the work. But I think that was part of their appeal – they seemed to be really hard grafters who never quite had what they needed – and I also think whatever deficit he felt is what drove Will on.”
Owen agrees with that last comment. “Yeah, but Will didn’t come across as envious. He realized he didn’t have all the resources, but I think he used that feeling of being an underdog to spur him on and I think he actually enjoyed that. It’s helped make him the driver he is because if you have to fight tooth and nail, you’re going to be a stronger driver than if you have it a little bit easy. Those early experiences shape you as a driver for better or worse and, in my opinion, in Will’s case it was better. If the odds are stacked against him, that’s when you see him at his best and that’s true even today.”
Much of the rivalry between the two Wills dissolved after the Sandown debacle as they, along with Kerry, Whincup (who’d finished third that year) and a couple of other friends hit the town, hit the beers, and then crashed out on the floor at Davison’s house.
“That was a laugh, because for the first time all year, we felt relaxed enough to be really open with each other,” says Davison. “That was a hell of a good night. It’s funny that me and Will both ended up in the UK at the same time, because we then spent a lot of time together. And then there was that real magic moment in Surfers Paradise a few years ago, when Will came to guest-drive a V8 Supercar in the Gold Coast 600. At the end of the race, I’d won, Whincup was second and Will was third. After the usual podium pictures, Jamie said, ‘Look, it’s the Formula Ford class of 2001, reunited eleven years later!’ so we got some cool photos and memories. I loved that.”
The Wills’ paths would cross again little more than a year after their Formula Ford fight, but for 2002, Davison was heading to the UK for the Formula Renault championship while Power felt he still had unfinished business at home.
Chapter 4
Holden his own
Another off-season, another ominous feeling of uncertainty was all William Stephen Power could see down the road. Sure, he’d finished second in the 2001 Australian Formula Ford championship, and impressed everyone by doing it with an older car and a smallish team. But converting that into a ride for 2002 by magically finding a sack of sponsorship dollars didn’t appear to be on the cards.
“I had no money to do anything for the next year, and no one had come looking for me.”
This didn’t surprise Kerry Fenwick, his girlfriend of the time, because Power wasn’t the best when it came to going out and selling himself.
“Will was a nightmare to work with in those days, from that point of view,” she says, “because he had been convinced that he could let his driving do the talking. He wanted a scenario where he could say, ‘Just put me in the right car and I’ll show you what I can do,’ and then the rides would be offered. But that never happens. Instead, you’ve got to go hunting for sponsorship and if you don’t get that money, your career could end. Well, sure enough, each
off-season he had no idea what he’d be doing come the new year, and so that was always really stressful for him.
“To be fair, another problem was that to get sponsorship, you had to believe and project the confidence that you were the best, and being that way didn’t come naturally to Will at all. He felt that was boasting and that just isn’t him.”
One man who was prepared to help was Stuart DeDear, who had raced in Formula Ford in Will’s first full year in the category, 2000.
“The first time I took notice of Will Power was at Phillip Island when I saw him fly over everyone and have his massive shunt down the pit straight!” says DeDear. “So that was Will . . .
“Anyway, at the end of that year, for that final race, I literally had too many sponsors for my car, so I did a deal to put them on Will’s car and Marcus Marshall’s car, and we lined up with Will on pole, me second and Marcus third so we had a good race. Well . . . Marcus and I did. Will was on another planet!
“But that’s how my job started: I decided to step out of the cockpit and start a management and sponsorship company, and I’m proud to say Will Power was the first driver I was an agent for. I put his first proper sponsorship deal together, and my little company grew and grew, thereafter. But Will’s still the fastest and best I’ve ever dealt with, and once he had a sponsor, he was good with them because he always seemed very appreciative of people who’d put money and time into his career. And I felt the same way about him, to be honest: I only ever want to help those who help themselves, and Will was 100 per cent in that category. No airs and graces about him whatsoever. If something needed to be done, he’d do it himself rather than look around for someone else to do it.”
However, by December 2001, Will was at a loss. His father wasn’t keen on throwing more dollars at an uncertain career, so at the Surfers Paradise Indy car race, Will decided it would be smart to at least investigate the V8 Supercar route. He met with Mark Larkham, a V8 Supercar driver of some repute, who by then ran his own team after some successful years with the Stone Brothers squad. Larkham would go on to create an academy for young drivers, but at this stage was simply keeping an eye on the junior categories looking for the promising rising talent.
“Everyone watches the Formula Ford scene in Australia,” says Larkham, “because whether they then pursue open-wheel racing or switch discipline to touring cars, the guys worth spotting have come through Formula Ford. Well in 2001, Will really stood out because he had out-of-date equipment and he was taking the fight to some tough competitors. Then, at our Surfers Paradise race, his name registered with me again. There was this ‘Young Guns’ race with everyone driving identical Honda Integra Rs, and Will won it ahead of guys who’ve gone on to become V8 Supercar stars, like Jamie Whincup and Mark Winterbottom.
“Now that’s pretty unusual for a single-seater racer to throw a roof over his head and do that well, straight off. Obviously he’d done sports sedan racing before but, even so, that had been a while back, and he’s now in a front-wheel-drive Honda coupe, totally different from anything he’s raced before, and he wins.
“So then later on that day, I was working in our transporter in the V8 Supercar paddock, and this young man came over and knocked on the door, held out his hand and said, ‘Hello. I’m Will Power.’ I hadn’t recognized him because all I’d ever seen of him was on TV with his helmet on, racing and winning. We sat down and had a bit of a chat about where he wanted to go, and that absolutely got my attention. He’d got off his ass and come and spoken to a team owner.”
Larkham was impressed and the pair talked about hooking up for the V8 Supercar series endurance events which required two drivers per car, but he could see that Power was still obsessed with the single-seater scene.
Obsessed and depressed, in fact. As Power, Gary Hamilton and Kerry Fenwick drove to Sandown in December for that now infamous weekend of destruction at the final round of the Formula Ford championship – held three months after the penultimate round! – Power was morosely muttering that his career was over. And then suddenly, a ray of sunshine penetrated the big black cloud hanging over his head.
“I think 2001 was the first year I had a mobile phone,” recalls Power, “and back then, service was a bit patchy down the east coast of Australia. You’d only get reception when you hit major towns – or I did, anyway, possibly because my phone was crap. Anyway, I can’t remember where we were but as we approached some city, my mobile dinged because I’d been left a voicemail, I checked it out and it was Graham Watson. He’s the New Zealand guy who ran Ralt Australia. So I called him back, and he said, ‘Do you want to come test a Formula Holden?’ I said, ‘I don’t have any money,’ and he said, ‘No problem, we’ll pay for it.’ For the second time in my short career, I couldn’t say yes fast enough.”
Formula Holdens were basically mid-1990s Formula 3000 cars but with 4-liter V6 Holden engines replacing the more highly tuned and more expensive 3-liter V8 units used in Europe. F3000 was the last stop before Formula 1, so the cars had a wide track, fat slick (treadless) tires and created strong g-forces. They were, as you’d expect, deliberately challenging to drive to prepare young F1 wannabes for the top rank in motorsport. While Australia’s Holden-powered variants were less powerful – 350 as opposed to 420 horsepower – they developed considerable torque. And because FHolden was the top single-seater series in Australia and therefore the fastest cars Down Under, whoever won the championship was crowned Australian Drivers Champion. It was a hugely prestigious title earned by such drivers as Stan Jones (father of 1980 F1 World Champion Alan Jones), John Bowe, Graham Watson himself, Mark Skaife, Jason Bright, and Scott Dixon. In short, being offered a test was a privilege; if it led to a race seat, it would be a big deal.
“Before the test with Graham Watson, Bob decided to let Will get a feel for the power by letting him try his own Formula Holden,” says Hamilton. “Obviously, with Will’s quickest ride up to then being Formula Ford, he’d been used to 100–110 horsepower, treaded tires, and no aerodynamic downforce. So I think Bob was pretty keen that Will got accustomed to the serious step-up in power and grip in time for the big test with Graham, and they headed off to Queensland Raceway at Ipswich.
“Well, Bob went out in the car and set a time, and he didn’t say it as such, but I know he wasn’t expecting Will to beat his time, because Bob was still good, totally used to that amount of power, and familiar with that car in particular.
“First couple of laps, Will just gets used to it, and then he starts going quick and Bob’s standing beside me. I just hear, ‘Holy shit. He is good.’ And it turns out Will was just annihilating his [Bob’s] time by about 1.5 seconds, on a 60-second lap.”
Watson would be similarly impressed days later at Wakefield Park (near Goulburn in New South Wales), as Power cut down to a time that proved he was more than ready for the leap.
“That car was awesome, really fun,” says Will, “but I just didn’t have enough money. Graham had offered me a good deal, not massively expensive at all, but more than I had. I remember driving around Brisbane with Kerry, saying ‘How can I get this money? I’ve got to do this. I’ve just got to.’
“Well, an uncle had died and left me some money, but not enough to fund a full season. I think in the end I had to go to my dad and ask him if he could chip in the rest.”
The price of the ride has been lost in the mists of time, but Will and Bob agree that it was exceptional value, and it’s undeniable that Will made the most of it. He nailed seven wins in the twelve-race season and thus took his first championship at national level. The fact that it earned him the title of Australian Drivers Champion was made still more appropriate by his success in the Australian Formula 3 series in which he raced simultaneously that year, thanks to ardent club racer Bevan Carrick.
Carrick, who’d many years earlier raced against Bob Power, had (like seemingly every other motorsport person Down Under) kept track of Will Power in Formula Ford in 2001, watched him take the fight to Will Davison, and come to
the conclusion he was very good and a potential star. Carrick himself wanted to race in Formula 3 so had bought a 1997 Dallara with a Toyota engine and competed in a couple of club-level races.
“However, the car needed sorting,” he says, “and from that point of view, I didn’t know what I was doing. So I was testing it down at Queensland Raceway and Will was there too. I wandered down pit lane and said, ‘Hey, how’d you like a go in my F3 car?’ and his eyes lit up and he gave the Will Power stare. Well of course he immediately gets out there and gets it moving like a cut snake, and then was able to come in and say, ‘This is wrong, that’s wrong,’ and we made adjustments accordingly. And by the end of the day, I had this plan brewing. I said, ‘Why don’t we do a national Formula 3 round?’
“By this time, two rounds – four races – had already happened, but I was interested to see what Will could do among the cream of the country’s F3 hopefuls. So he, myself and a young guy called Gary Sturdy, who worked for me, and still does, hitched the car on a trailer and headed down south for the eleven-hour drive to Oran Park, [near Sydney] in New South Wales. I’m sure we looked like total amateurs, and we were a long way down pit lane and the top teams were up at the sharp end. They had quicker cars – wider-track 1999 and 2001 Dallaras, [Opel/GM] Spiess engines with Elf fuel, and they were definitely creating more horsepower than our Toyota. So we didn’t have the best chassis or the best engine.
“So then during practice, Will goes out and promptly knocks almost a second off Oran’s F3 lap record, and people start looking down pit lane thinking, ‘Who are those guys?’”
The Sheer Force of Will Power Page 5