Former Walker Racing team manager Rob Edwards says: “We went to Portland because it was important to keep it under wraps that we were testing Will. We went straight up after the Denver race, in the middle of August, and because we were using the spare car, the old Reynard, we took along Mario Haberfeld’s data from 2004 as comparison.”
Adds Walker: “After Will’s initial laps, he came into the pits with his eyes on stalks – as they usually are whenever he’s learning something – but it wasn’t from fear or anything like that. He was just focusing, mentally gathering data as he discovered what these cars were all about. Then I went out into the woods in the infield to watch him drive around those fast sections near the end of the circuit and I could see he adapted well, got confident very quickly and wasn’t intimidated by the car whatsoever. I came back to Rob and I said, ‘Yeah, he’s got it. He’s good.’”
“Typical Derrick, playing things down,” chuckles Edwards. “As I recall, by midday Will had proven he was a very special talent because his time would have put him in the top six on the grid for the 2005 race! And remember, this was with a very unfashionable Reynard . . .”
For Power himself, the day gave him a glimpse of his own personal Utopia. Having scraped and begged for sponsorship dollars and living hand-to-mouth for the previous six years, here was an opportunity where all that was required of him was to be a driver.
Says Power, “I clearly remember going down that back straight at Portland, going through the gears and using all that horsepower, and thinking, ‘Man, I could definitely get paid to do this! This is !@#$%ing awesome!’ As far as braking and grip goes, it wasn’t anything more than we’d had in the World Series cars, but the horsepower was mega. I remember that Reynard was also quite easy to drive; it understeered so it was quite forgiving.”
Relieved, Walker called Gore. “I said, ‘Yeah, this Power kid is our guy, he’s what we need,’ and then I worked out a deal with Trevor Carlin to get Will over to drive for us. It was a very simple and quick process, which was just as well because we basically needed him right away.”
Power headed back across The Pond to continue his Euro-centric schedule. First there was Donington Park (in the UK) for a World Series by Renault (WSR) event, but that ended in a collision with Carlin teammate Andreas Zuber (“Definitely Zuber’s fault!” according to Daniele Rossi) that sent them both spinning out. Then there was Brands Hatch (in the UK) for the first ever round of A1GP, a series for spec racing cars of around 450–500 horsepower in which teams and drivers were defined by nationality. A1 Team Australia was run by Alan Docking Racing, so Power immediately felt at home and he was immediately on the pace, finishing fourth and second in the two races. Finally, with funds running low, he headed to Estoril (in Portugal) for WSR and clocked a couple of top ten finishes. With two races still to go in the season, Power bowed out, flying back to Indianapolis where Walker Racing molded him a seat for the Champ Car.
A new chapter of his life had begun. This became clear when it was revealed just a week before the Surfers Paradise race that Power had been signed by Team Australia for three years. For the team’s part, that showed a lot of faith in a driver who hadn’t yet raced a Champ Car; and it also seemed to indicate that the Aussie who’d once been aiming to follow the wheel tracks of Mark Webber into Formula 1 had now abandoned that dream.
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Power at the time, but then hesitated and pulled a slightly wincing expression as he pondered the correct way to answer – not offending his new employers but not closing any doors in the future. “Formula 1 is still a massive deal, but you’ve got to be realistic: I haven’t got any money right now and I can’t see where it’s going to come from. Even if I reached F3000 [the last rung before F1 in those days] and did well, it’s not going to guarantee anything in F1. Guys who’ve won that championship over the last seven or eight years [Juan Pablo Montoya, Bruno Junqueira, Justin Wilson, Sébastien Bourdais, Björn Wirdheim] have all ended up here in Champ Car.”
Fast-forward a decade, and Power doesn’t recall being so realistic.
“When I was in Formula 3, I’d kind of thought that if I didn’t make it to F1 I’d do Champ Car, but I was kind of kidding myself that I could just go to the States and land a Champ Car ride. In fact, it was like F1, World Sports Cars or any of those professional series – hard to crack into without experience because team owners weren’t willing to take a risk with an unknown driver. So it was only the Australia connection that opened the door for me.
“Mark Larkham, the guy I’d raced and tested for in V8 Supercars back in 2002, did the contract and negotiated that deal. When I got my first paycheck from Derrick I saw that, okay, it wasn’t going to make me rich but at least I was getting paid, and considering I was still an unknown in Champ Car, I’ve got to say it was a very fair deal.”
“Fair deal” wasn’t a phrase that would have entered Marcus Marshall’s head that weekend in Surfers Paradise. He’d long known his days were numbered at Team Australia – Gore had never hidden his feelings – and now the arrival of another Aussie in a third car must have strengthened Marshall’s resolve to go out on a high. He promptly delivered his most convincing qualifying performance of the year to wind up thirteenth, just four places and 0.75 seconds behind Tagliani on the grid. Unfortunately for Marshall, it was too late; in between the two regular Team Oz entries in eleventh was the series debutant in a third car, No. 25. Considering 1) this was Power’s Champ Car debut, 2) he had no experience at all in a Lola, 3) media and fan hoopla surrounded his every move, and 4) he hadn’t raced at Surfers for three years, you had to conclude the kid showed real promise.
For the race, Walker told the rookie to keep calm, go at his own pace, don’t do anything wildly ambitious; a good solid finish was all that was expected. And Power was following those instructions and running top six. Unfortunately Tagliani, who’d been delayed in a pit stop, hadn’t received the same pre-race memo, and when he tried to pass his teammate, he screwed up and pushed him into a tire wall. The crowd’s disappointment was audible, and it was probably only Tagliani’s public apology and eventual fourth place for the home team that kept him from being lynched.
For Power, the education and data-gathering continued at Mexico City’s Circuito Hermanos Rodriguez for Champ Car’s season finale. Marshall was gone, Power switched to the No. 5 car and in qualifying was just one-tenth of a second slower than Tagliani on a totally unfamiliar track. Walker is less surprised in retrospect than he was that weekend.
“I don’t usually remember details like this ten years later, but I do remember on that occasion thinking, ‘Hmm, what have we here?’” says Walker. “The thing is, that track was fantastic. In less politically correct times, we’d have called it ‘A man’s track,’ if you know what I mean, and that absolutely played to Will’s strengths. He’s naturally ballsy but also very accurate and precise in medium and high-speed corners, and the Mexico track had a lot of those. I don’t think we had very fast cars that weekend, but he really looked like he belonged in the series. He didn’t look like this was only his second race.”
Team Australia headed into the winter with a real sense of purpose, now blessed with two fast drivers, and the Australian one held latent promise of even greater days ahead.
Says Power: “I spent that Christmas at home in Toowoomba, working out and waiting for the call from Derrick to come back to the States. I was really excited but that meant I was getting impatient: I just wanted to get on with it. Every day I’d keep checking my computer for an email calling me back to America, but the truth is that Derrick had to keep pushing back the first test as he waited for sponsorship money. My payment schedule had also started and I wasn’t getting anything for a while, and then one day I received a check for $10,000 from Derrick. I was really excited and went to tell Dad, ‘Look, this is cool, they gave me some money,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I called Derrick and told him you had no income and your bank account’s empty.’ Pretty typical of my dad.
The sheer pleasure Power gets from talking about racing and racecars, and from being around like-minded individuals, was a major boon as he entered a new environment. Arguably the most worthwhile way an inexperienced or rookie driver can spend his off-season is forming a bond with his race engineer.
For a topline racer, an engineer is the vital two-way street for technical information, and also interpretation. He or she is the person who listens to the driver’s feedback regarding a car’s handling, comes up with suggestions as to how the performance could be improved, and then relays that information to the crew chief who then sets his gang on the case. The race engineer is also the one person that an open-minded driver will listen to for advice about technique, and that’s because the engineer’s the one with the detailed data on a laptop. Just as they interpret what the driver’s saying and come up with technical answers, so they interpret what’s on screen and relay it to the driver.
Walker had managed to acquire Brandon Fry, who’d just departed the two-year-old but highly promising RuSPORT team that had finished third and fifth in the 2005 Champ Car season with drivers Justin Wilson and AJ Allmendinger. With Walker, Fry would become Power’s full-time race engineer for 2006, while team manager Rob Edwards would continue his double-duty to oversee Tagliani’s car.
“As I started talking to Rob about joining the team for 2006, I did a bit of research on Will,” says Fry. “I thought he was pretty impressive because 2005 had been his first year out of Formula 3, but despite not doing many races, he’d adapted well to World Series by Renault and then to Champ Car and each of those had been a big step up in horsepower. So I thought, ‘Okay, he could be pretty good.’
“One of the first times I sat down and chatted with Will that winter, he told me what he looked for from a racecar and I tried to explain to him how Champ Cars work. He was saying he liked cars that oversteered so anything I could do to free up the car’s rear end would suit him. I warned him, ‘Well, these cars have a lot of power so you need a strong rear end, so they tend to understeer, but okay, we’ll work on it and do what we can.’
“He spent a lot of time in the race shop right from the word go, I remember that,” Fry continues. “He and Simon Pagenaud [lead driver on Derrick’s Formula Atlantic team that year] were always there. Will was living in Indy, so he’d work out in the morning, then come and spend the day in the shop. Sometimes I’d go biking with him and soon it reminded me of where I’d just been, at RuSPORT, when Justin and AJ lived by the shop and would visit all the time. Will wanted to be around the crew, just like they did, and that was good for team bonding. I remember feeling that as a rookie to the scene, Will was doing everything right to expedite the learning process.”
Team Australia tested at Sebring, and again Power was fast enough to look like he’d been racing Champ Cars for years, up in the top five or six in any given session, mixing it with the veterans.
“I went into the season pretty sure we’d be in with a shot at the Rookie of the Year title; that had to be the goal considering the team I was with,” says Power, whose principal opposition to that accolade was the wild but fast British Formula 3 graduate Dan Clarke driving for the CTE-HVM Racing team, Formula Atlantic champion Charles Zwolsman (Conquest Racing) and Belgium’s promising though impoverished Jan Heylen (Dale Coyne Racing). However, a decently funded Walker Racing team was renowned for performing like a well-funded team. As Power enthused at the time, “If you see the way Derrick runs this team on the budget he has, he does an awesome job. This has got to be the most efficient team in the Champ Car pit lane.”
Power was emphatically not the most efficient driver on pit lane but as a rookie that was to be expected: he had a daunting learning curve. By 2006, because of the split between Champ Car and IRL, the US open-wheel driver pool was also split, so neither series was at more than 50 per cent potential strength: in broad terms, each grid contained five aces, five good drivers, five okay drivers and a couple of hopeless cases. But Champ Car’s challenge for newcomers was doubled by its combination of a brutal car running on rough circuits where you couldn’t test. A rookie learning the tracks while also learning the cars was bound to make one or two mistakes on qualifying runs, so Power was initially two- or three-tenths of a second and two or three grid spots behind teammate Tagliani, his most direct barometer of comparison.
Lack of experience had other effects on race day, too. Explains Fry: “One of the biggest challenges for a Champ Car driver was a pit stop, and I don’t mean what he did on pit road; I’m talking about in-laps [going ultra-quick on worn tires before ducking into the pits] and out-laps [going ultra-quick on fresh but cold tires]. It would surprise you how big a difference there was between the best and worst drivers on out-laps – like three seconds. That was often a bigger spread than from the front of the grid to the back in qualifying! And it won’t surprise you to learn that generally it was the rookies who struggled most, because it’s hard to find the balance between going quick and sticking it in the fence.
“The other thing for rookies to get used to was the length of the races. Whether they’d come to Champ Car from Atlantics, Indy Lights, Formula 3, World Series by Renault, the rookies had never been in races longer than forty-five minutes, so you’d often see new Champ Car drivers make mistakes right around first pit stop time. Power was quite quick at realizing the extra work needed to concentrate for twice as long as he was used to, and we also really pounded on him the value of those out-laps. But at the end of the day, there’s no substitute for experience.”
A mistake while running fourth at Long Beach, a collision at Houston, a driveshaft failure after qualifying an impressive fifth at Milwaukee (his first oval race) all combined to hide Power’s potential. Trackside, he looked spectacular, especially on a natural road course like Monterrey, Mexico, where a driver had enough room to risk exceeding the limit. During Friday practice, he twice came into Turn 1 so hard that the curbs on the outside of the corner served as a launching ramp, and on one occasion, car No. 5 had all four wheels off the ground while flying through a cloud of orange sand. But creating cool visuals didn’t get the job done on the stopwatch.
“Yeah, it was pretty tough in the early part of the season,” says Power. “Long Beach was okay until I made a stupid mistake, and then Houston was horrible. I wasn’t quick, I was complaining about the humidity – I had so little energy I thought something was wrong with me – and I remember Derrick getting mad. It was one of those periods that affects you a lot when you’re a rookie: you get a bad result and then another bad result and it starts wearing on you, and leads to more mistakes. At Monterrey I knew the car was fine and it was just me; I couldn’t understand why my driving was so bad, but basically I’d forgotten what Phil Di Fazio had taught me back in the Fortec F3 days. So I took Tagliani’s basic setup and immediately went quicker.
“The thing is, as a rookie I had a baseline setup for learning the tracks in practice sessions, but then we’d run out of time to really get a qualifying setup sorted. Same thing for the race: in the end, I’d usually use Tag’s setup and that was pretty good but didn’t totally suit my driving style so it was hard to be consistent. And I suppose, if I’m being honest, I didn’t know the car well enough to know what to as
k for from the engineer.”
That’s how Fry remembers it, too. “The transformation through that year was pretty big. If you’d asked me after the first four races what I thought of Will’s feedback, I’d have told you it wasn’t good,” he recalls, “but if you asked me the same question in the last four races of the year, I’d tell you his feedback was very good. So it just took a while for him to know how to make the car suit his style. I distinctly remember at Long Beach after his first qualifying run, he came in and I said, ‘What do you need to go faster?’ and he said, ‘Mate, I have no idea’ . . . and he truly didn’t! So I asked him what he wanted to do, and he said, ‘Well you can fill it up and I’ll go back out and drive around, or you can try something else.’ And that’s kind of how the first few races went.”
A small but significant breakthrough came in Portland, Oregon, where he’d first tested for Walker the previous August. With track knowledge, Power could focus more on dialing in the car and, for the first time, he outqualified his team leader. His advantage didn’t last long once the green flag dropped, however.
“It was a real shame,” said Fry, “because almost immediately in the race, we discovered an issue – a rear brake line had rubbed so we had to pit him and lost a bunch of laps while we fixed it. But when he went out again, he set fastest lap of the race and I think it was a new lap record.”
It was. And gradually over the season, as Power learned more about the Lola, so Fry learned what his driver needed. There were still times when they got lost, but in those instances, Fry’s default option was to dial out the understeer, make the front end more positive . . . and that worked. As the car’s handling came further into Power’s prime operating range, he gained confidence, the pieces started coming together, and the momentum kept building. Soon after midpoint of the 14-race season he was more than a match for Tagliani.
The Sheer Force of Will Power Page 10