Whether it was physical exhaustion or mental exasperation, Will Power was nearing his wits' end Saturday night, despite his second runner-up finish of the year Saturday at Iowa Speedway.
The often vocal driver used his post-race broadcast interview, and then media Zoom call from his makeshift ice bath, to air his season’s worth of frustrations — a mix of his own errors, crew mishaps and unlucky breaks — as he toils tied for fifth-place in the standings, 102 points behind Scott Dixon.
"I would love to have had the win, of course, but it’s seeming as if you do a good job in the series, you just get screwed, so I’m glad, for once, we actually get a good result out of this,” Power told an NBCSN pit reporter Saturday night, as he came up short of Team Penske teammate, pole-sitter and race-winner Josef Newgarden.
“I’m looking forward to trying to have a good rest of the season. I don’t know what I have to do to have a normal race like Dixon and (Simon) Pagenaud. Even if those guys qualify last, they end up at the front.
“Maybe I just try less and be a much worse driver, and I’ll do way better. That’s what it seems like.”
The comments came after Team Penske’s best race weekend of the year, with Pagenaud and Newgarden sweeping IndyCar’s Iowa doubleheader to slide into second and third in the championship race. On Friday, Pagenaud pulled a miraculous recovery after starting last on the grid. Fuel pressure issues kept him parked on the qualifying grid without a chance to make an attempt for either race, forcing him to start at the back.
Despite the early-evening mechanical issues, the Frenchman managed to lead 83 of the race’s 250 laps Friday, including the final 73 to squeeze out a win ahead of Dixon in second-place, who started from 17th himself. Meanwhile, Power, who started third Friday, was derailed after his left-front tire changer failed to properly fasten his new wheel on during his second stop of the night. Moments later, Power’s car veered into the outside wall just as the wheel slid off his car.
He finished 21st.
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- Recap: Simon Pagenaud recovers from qualifying woes to win at Iowa
- Conor Daly secures first-career IndyCar pole for Friday's race at Iowa Speedway
Friday’s misfortune followed a rollercoaster weekend at Road America the weekend before, where a slow last pitstop in a duel with Dixon paved the way for the New Zealander to win his third consecutive race of the year. In the post-race call there, Power revealed that a mistyped gear ratio before the race gave him fits and played a part in slowing him all afternoon.
"It was simply a mistake, my engineer just typing it in," Power said. "This guy never makes mistakes. He just happened to type the wrong number in. Just a simple mistake, and he has no clue how it happened."
Then, that Sunday, a pair of lap-one incidents — Power running off course and an avoidable contact penalty — relegated him to a finish outside the top-10.
Tack on a stalled car in the pits following an unlucky caution flag at IMS in the second race of the year, and 2020 in-race has been as much a nightmare as a top-five series contender could expect.
As we’ve grown to assume, Power has qualified as strongly as anyone during the compact 2020 schedule, including the 58th pole of his career ahead of the GMR Grand Prix. Now he’s tied with Newgarden with the highest average starting position (4.2). But it was clear Saturday that the leapfrogging skills of Dixon, whose seventh-best average starting position, and Pagenaud (20th out of 21 full-season drivers) have struck a nerve.
And with IndyCar’s policy of making only top-10 drivers available post-race this year, it’s one of the first times he’s been given a chance to let it out.
“I just want to have normal races, where just strange, abnormal things don’t happen. Just straight-up normal races, and be able to use the pace that I have. That would be awesome. That would be just so good,” he said. “Or, you could just totally change the tactic and just qualify horribly and do a bad job, and the way the rules are right now, you end up in the front. You’ve kinda got to decide which one you want to do. I’ll take working hard and trying to be good.”
The “rules” – or more specifically, one rule – have been the bane of Power’s existence at times throughout his IndyCar career. For years, he’s been the most vocal opponent of IndyCar’s regulation that closes the pits temporarily during a full-course yellow, which, if it happens to fall right around a pit window, can ruin the day of the leaders who haven’t pitted.
Rather than be able to dip in immediately and use their built-up cushion as a buffer to stay ahead of mid-pack cars that have already pitted, the rule often shuffles those leaders to the back, once everyone lines up behind the pace car and IndyCar deems it safe for drivers to shuffle through the pits in an orderly fashion.
Most notably, the rule may have stolen a win from him last year at COTA when, while leading and stretching the final pit window with Alexander Rossi close behind, a late crash between James Hinchcliffe and Felix Rosenqvist helped serve up Colton Herta his first-career win.
Power, on the other hand, had his driveshaft falter on pit lane. After taking the pole and leading the first 45 laps in the 60-lap race, he finished last in 24th.
Power suffered a similar fate earlier this month at IMS, where, after leading 28 of the first 40 laps from pole, he was shuffled to mid-pack after his second stop ahead of the green flag before stalling during his final stop and taking 20th.
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“It’s frustrating when you’re so quick, and you keep getting screwed by yellows in IndyCar, ‘cause the pits are closed. That is the most frustrating, annoying thing in history,” Power said Saturday. “It’s such a bad rule. It should be changed. It should have been changed this year, and otherwise, I would have won a race, and otherwise, Josef Newgarden would probably be up there in the championship, too. And Dixon wouldn’t have gotten that freebie win.
“That’s what I say about the season. Screw that bloody, stupid ‘closing the pits under yellow’ crap. They just need to change the rule and make it fair to people that put a hard, good effort in and spend a lot of money to be at the front. To get screwed and basically get a drive-through penalty ‘cause the yellow falls at the wrong time, it’s just a horrible rule. There’s a solution for it, but they don’t want to change it.”
Aside from his career-defining triumph in the 2018 Indy 500, it’s been a half-dozen years’ worth of close calls for Power, ever since winning his lone series title in 2014. Since then, he’s finished no worse than fifth in the championship – including podium runs in 2015, 2016 and 2018 – but has had to watch teammates Pagenaud and Newgarden and rival Dixon take home the top-spot each year.
That came after finishing second three consecutive years from 2010-12.
When his career comes to a close, the 39-year-old driver should finish as one of the best two IndyCar drivers of his generation, sitting tied-for-sixth all-time at the moment in wins (37) and second in poles (58). And along with his supreme driving skills and instincts, his own will and desire to be great have gotten him there.
But that passion often comes with fiery frustration. Now, he has three weeks before his next chance to try to string together a pair of good finishes and make a late run at Dixon, Pagenaud and Newgarden – all nearly 50 points ahead or more.
“I didn’t really sleep last night, I was so frustrated about what happened,” he said Saturday. “It’s obviously been very frustrating to start the year, as it has been for the past six years. I don’t know what I have to do, but we’ll just soldier on.
“Obviously, 100 points out, who cares. I’m just gonna go try and win races.”
Email IndyStar motor sports reporter Nathan Brown at nlbrown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @By_NathanBrown.
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Will Power airs his season-long frustrations after Iowa doubleheader: 'Maybe I should try less' - IndyStar
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