It’s safe to say that Will Power’s healed up quite nicely.
Last August, as he laid in a hospital bed with injuries sustained in a season-ending crash at Infineon Raceway, he fretted over whether his part-time opportunity with Team Penske had been dashed. But during his off-season recovery, he was upgraded to a full-season program with Penske in 2010 and established himself as a potential championship contender in last month’s Open Test at Barber Motorsports Park.
After today’s chaotic season opener in Sao Paulo, Brazil, there can be no doubt now that the pride of Toowoomba, Australia is a threat for this year’s IZOD IndyCar Series title. With less than four minutes to go in the event, which became a timed race during a 36-minute red flag period for severe weather, Power took the lead from Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay on Lap 58 and pulled away from the American to win by 1.8581 seconds at the checkered flag on Lap 61.
Power took advantage of the misfortune of teammate and fellow Australian Ryan Briscoe. On Lap 54, with less than 15 minutes remaining, Briscoe (a native of Sydney) had a slim lead over Hunter-Reay before locking up the brakes on his No. 6 Team Penske machine going into Turn 5 of the 11-turn, 2.6-mile temporary street circuit. The car slowed down, but it ended up skidding into the tire barriers and Hunter-Reay was seemingly in the catbird’s seat.
With six-and-a-half minutes on the clock, Hunter-Reay took the green on a Lap 56 restart but couldn’t completely shake Power, who had moved up to second after Briscoe’s incident. Then two laps later, the No. 12 Verizon Wireless car of Power got a run on Hunter-Reay’s No. 37 IZOD special down the nearly mile-long backstraight. As the two cars got toward the right-hand hairpin of Turn 11, Power took Hunter-Reay on the inside and made the winning pass.
It was an exciting conclusion to a race that had all sorts of mayhem to satisfy the sold-out crowd at Sao Paulo and IndyCar followers back in the States and around the world. A five-car, opening-lap incident at Turns 1-2 (the S of Samba) that ended with Mario Moraes’ No. 32 entry running over the top of Marco Andretti’s No. 26 car seemed to set the tone. From there, the day would see a short but powerful thunderstorm drench the track with rain and hail on Lap 30, causing multiple cars still on slick tires to spin out. Communications at the track were knocked offline for an extended period by the storm and after the red flag (which came after a full-course yellow at Lap 33), teams had to decide the right time to have their drivers flip from rain tires back to slicks while the track dried out under green conditions.
Power also had his own problems during the day, which featured an early-morning qualifying session four hours before the race due to overnight diamond grinding on the problematic main straight, the Sambadromo. He was the fastest man on the practice charts on Saturday, but today saw him battling gearbox problems that almost kept him out of qualifying. However, the dilemma was solved and Power managed to crack the Firestone Fast Six round, where he put up a lap good for fifth at the start of the race.
He pitted on Lap 4 after the major first-lap incident, but got himself back up the pylon to second place with another well-timed stop before the weather split the race effectively into two halves. From there, he and Hunter-Reay went back to dry tires when they returned to the track, and their decisions paid off in the latter stages. But in the end, it was Power that took the day.
“I saw Ryan make a mistake — at that point, I wasn’t sure how many laps were left,” Power recalled. “They told me on the radio there were six laps to go. I said, ‘Six laps until I pit?’ They said, ‘No, six laps left in the race,’ so I went for it.
“It was probably the most mixed up race that I have ever been in, but it created an opportunity for me to come back through the field and end up winning the race. The improvements that they did to the track last night, were like night and day. Not a problem at all going down the frontstraight. I think it is just a really good day for racing. If you were fast, you could pass, because there is such a good track layout here. I’m pretty sure it was an exciting race for the fans.”
Those fans proved to be hearty as no one left throughout the day, even as the elements got ugly in the middle stages of the event. Ryan Hunter-Reay praised them and also raved about the action he took part in.
“It is great to have a race in Brazil,” he said. “This has been a long time coming. The country and the fans are so passionate about racing. It’s great to do it here, and that was a great show we put on. That’s what we need on these street circuit and road courses is a lot of passing like that. We definitely have the tools to do it…It was just great to get the IZOD car up on the podium in second place to start of the season.”
But perhaps the biggest star in Brazil as of tonight may not be Power or Hunter-Reay.
Another comeback story played out in wonderful fashion as Vitor Meira, a native of Brasilia (Brazil’s capital), finished third in his first race back after a vicious crash at last year’s Indianapolis 500. He finished ahead of fellow Brazilian and Belo Horizonte native Raphael Matos, with whom he tangled with during that hard accident at the Brickyard. That incident left Meira with multiple broken vertebrae in his back and forced A.J. Foyt Racing to have Hunter-Reay (who came “on loan” from Vision Racing) race their No. 14 ABC Supply entry for the rest of 2009.
Meira got by Matos at Turn 11 on Lap 57 to grab the final spot on the podium. It’s his first top-three finish since his runner-up effort at Indianapolis for Panther Racing in 2008.
“It couldn’t be much better than that,” Meira said. “I think Will can relate to it with a back injury and all that; it gets pretty uncertain at some times and having a team behind you making sure that the seat is available, it makes a big difference during the recovery. This is the start of the big thank you I have to give to A.J. and ABC Supply. I hope we get better. We overcame a lot here.
“Like Will said before, it was a mixed up race. I think whether you were able to keep your nose clean and were fast enough to make up position in all conditions, you could come out with a good result and that’s what we did.”
Speaking of Panther, they scored a surprising fifth-place finish with Dan Wheldon, who’s considered to be much better on ovals than street courses. His march to a top-five was not without incident, however. On Lap 29, Wheldon was chasing Alex Tagliani for fifth place when he ran into the rear end of Tagliani’s No. 77 Bowers and Wilkins/FAZZT Race Team entry at Turn 5.
That sent “Tag” into the No. 11 7-Eleven/Andretti Autosport machine of Tony Kanaan and knocked them both into the runoff area at the corner. Wheldon sustained a broken wing in the melee and was knocked back to 13th after getting a new one plus rain tires. He flipped back to dry tires after the restart following the red flag period, and he eventually pulled himself towards the front again.
But during and after the race, the Englishman apologized to Tagliani and Kanaan for his role in the accident. It forced the former to settle for 19th place and the latter to soldier on to 10th at the finish.
“Tag had a bit of a bobble coming onto the straight and I got a really good run,” Wheldon explained. “He defended a little bit and I was going to look to the inside but decided to pull in just a touch and when I braked, I hit a really big bump and it just lifted my front wheels off the ground. When that happens, you can’t stop.”
It was one of the “wrong” reasons this inaugural Sao Paulo Indy 300 weekend will be remembered for. Fortunately, it also had plenty of “right” ones to balance things out. In the end, it was a fun time.
But for some, like fourth-place finisher Matos, it was more than that.
“This week was like a dream come true racing in my home country and in front of my friends and family,” said the driver of the No. 2 Luczo Dragon/de Ferran car. “There was a lot of tension and pressure, but we kept everything together and brought the car home. It was extremely important to finish this race, and to get my best finish in Brazil was very rewarding.”
—–
Sao Paulo Indy 300 – Final results (timed race; ended at Lap 61)
All cars are Dallara-Honda packages with Firestone tires
1. 12-Will Power, Verizon/Team Penske
2. 37-Ryan Hunter-Reay, IZOD/Andretti Autosport
3. 14-Vitor Meira, ABC Supply/A.J. Foyt Racing
4. 12-Raphael Matos, HP/Luczo Dragon + de Ferran
5. 4-Dan Wheldon, National Guard/Panther Racing
6. 9-Scott Dixon, Target Chip Ganassi Racing
7. 10-Dario Franchitti, Target Chip Ganassi Racing
8. 24-Mike Conway, Dad’s Root Beer + Roll Coater/Dreyer & Reinbold
9. 3-Helio Castroneves, Team Penske
10. 11-Tony Kanaan, 7-Eleven/Andretti Autosport
11. 22-Justin Wilson, Z-Line Designs/Dreyer & Reinbold
12. 8-EJ Viso, PDVSA + Herbalife/KV Racing Technology
13. 23-Ana Beatriz, Ipiranga/Dreyer & Reinbold
14. 6-Ryan Briscoe, Team Penske
15. 7-Danica Patrick, GoDaddy.com/Andretti Autosport, -1 lap
16. 78-Simona De Silvestro, Stargate Worlds/HVM Racing, -3 laps
17. 34-Mario Romancini, Dolly/Conquest Racing, -15 laps, Contact
18. 19-Alex Lloyd, Boy Scouts of America/Dale Coyne Racing, -31 laps, Contact
19. 77-Alex Tagliani, Bowers & Wilkins/FAZZT Race Team, -33 laps, Contact
20. 06-Hideki Mutoh, Panasonic + Formula Dream/Newman-Haas-Lanigan, -34 laps, Contact
21. 18-Milka Duno, CITGO/Dale Coyne Racing, -41 laps, Contact
22. 5-Takuma Sato, KV Racing Technology, no laps completed, Contact
23. 26-Marco Andretti, Venom Energy/Andretti Autosport, no laps completed, Contact
24. 32-Mario Moraes, Banco Panamericano, no laps completed, Contact
Race Statistics — Winner’s average speed: 76.733 m.p.h.; Time of race: 2 hours, 57.7112 seconds; Margin of victory: 1.8581 seconds; Cautions: 5 for 19 laps; Lead changes: Seven among five drivers; Lap leaders: Franchitti 1-23, De Silvestro 24-27, Hunter-Reay 28-36, Franchitti 37-42, Hunter-Reay 43-49, Briscoe 50-53, Hunter-Reay 54-57, Power 58-61.
Championship Standings — Power 50, Hunter-Reay 40, Meira 35, Matos 32, Wheldon 30, Franchitti 29, Dixon 28, Conway 24, Castroneves 22, Kanaan 20.
Next Race — Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg (street course), March 28, 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC, IMS Radio Network and IndyCar.com.
