RFM Front Page News

Photos courtesy Jamie Longmuir
MONTREAL, Quebec, Canada (August 26, 2006) — Will Power is a good name for him. The young Australian driver currently thrilling the crowds in the No. 5 Aussie Vineyards Team Australia Lola has been the quickest rookie in every race except Portland, and currently stands atop the Roshfrans Rookie of the Year contest with a 22 point lead over Speedy Dan Clarke. His expression is penetrating and intense, and he rarely smiles; he is focused on the job at hand and determined to get at the top wherever he may be. Power had a two-race tryout at the end of last season, one of them in a rainy Surfer’s Paradise event, a track he’d run in Formula Ford; he was in the top ten when someone else’s accident put paid to his race. With tomorrow’s weather report predicting a 90% chance of rain, Power is glad he had the experience of running in the rain in Surfer’s. “I don’t mind it,” he said. “Rain mixes up the grid and you’ve got a better chance of making up positions if the weather is bad.”

Power likes the Montreal track, although the morning session was dusty and slick; as the weekend goes on (until it rains) the track will improve. “And,” he pointed out, “there’s more in both the car and the driver!” He qualified 9th in the first round yesterday, but because of the parity in the cars, that means he was less than a second out of P4, so he won’t need to find much more to shoot himself right up the order for the weekend.

Power is 25 and started racing karts at 6 years old, but it was when he got into Formula Ford that he began taking the idea of a racing career seriously. He then headed to the British F3 series in England and scored four top=five finishes there, topped with a second place in Thruxton. He is enjoying the North American tracks; like other drivers who have had experience in both Europe and North America, he finds the variety of tracks and venues over here stimulating and challenging. “In Champ Cars,” he pointed out, “we become better all-round drivers because of the many different tracks we run on. Power, too, is cautious about ovals although his best qualifying this year was at Milwaukee; “If you get injured on an oval,” he said candidly, “it’s going to be a big one, because the speeds are very fast and the walls are very hard.” As any driver would, he will drive ovals if they are on the series schedule and otherwise thinks of them as just another form of racing he intends mastering. Currently his favourite track is Edmonton, a wide fast track on an airport layout with the best fans in the series.

There has been some talk of bringing standing starts to Champ Cars, and Power is very much in favour of them. “They are a better show for the fans,” he said, “and more exciting for both fans and drivers. The rolling start spreads the field out too much. I have done standing starts in Europe and I really think it’s the way we ought to go.” To suggestions about the potential of even bigger accidents at such Turn 1 debacle sites as Cleveland, Power pointed out that the speeds will be lower going into Turn 1 and therefore the potential for really bad accidents will be less.

Turning to 2007, although Power has not firmed up a contract for the new season, he remains optimistic and determined that he will be driving with Team Australia next year. The all-out effort to win the Rookie of the Year award is part of his strategy and has been from the beginning; he also hopes for a top ten points finish for the season to add to his resume. “I really want to come back to this team,” he emphasized. “I want to drive the new DP01 and I think we can really achieve against the other teams in the new car. It’s going to be easier to pass in that one, and it’s got the paddle shifting –while there is more challenge to the stick shift and you can work around gearbox problems where you can’t with the paddle shift, I believe it is the way to go as all the top series use them. I hope we’ll have a chance to test the new cars thoroughly before the season starts.”

Asked about possibly racing in other kinds of cars, Power suggested perhaps the V8 Supercup, a series in Australia bigger than NASCAR and one in which he has run in the past, but he really doesn’t think about other forms of racing. Open wheel racing is the racing for him and that’s where he’s focused. And although he admitted that the “highlight reel” crash where he flew backward off the track into the television camera stand was nothing he’d care to repeat – “I was flying backward and knew there was something back there but couldn’t see a thing. And my mother didn’t like it for sure! Dad has raced before and he was more understanding, I think.” – there’s nothing going to come between Will Power and the top step on the podium that isn’t going to see his wheel prints on it as he makes his way forward.

Racing, you see, is not only a matter of talent, drive and ambition – it is a matter of will power. And when Will Power is your name, as well as your motto, you’re on your way to stardom for sure.