Written by Archie O’Reilly
There is fury emblazoned across every inch of Will Power as he climbs over into the pit lane from his wrecked No.12 Team Penske Chevy.
It doesn’t matter that his helmet remains on - his body language tells the full story and he marches over the inside wall of the main straight at World Wide Technology Raceway. And the exit from his car times perfectly with teammate Josef Newgarden passing by in the pits.
Cue the trademark Power brandishing of the ‘bird’ towards his Team Penske stablemate.
“William does it a bit,” fellow Penske driver Scott McLaughlin went on to joke post-race. Power has been known to gesture similarly in the face of such adversity during his IndyCar career, whether towards race control or fellow drivers.
The red flag has been thrown by this point and the cars are in line re-entering the pits. Power has just been collected by Arrow McLaren’s Alexander Rossi on a late-race restart, with Rossi sent momentarily airborne and the innocent Juncos Hollinger Racing and Dale Coyne Racing entries of Romain Grosjean and Jack Harvey also caught up.
But it is not Rossi that Power’s incandescent rage is aimed at. While he did not name his teammate in the ensuing interview with NBC, which was initially turned down with an expletive before a respectable backtrack, the brunt of Power’s fury was towards Newgarden.
At the front of the field, Newgarden was in control of the 10-to-go restart, incidentally bringing the field to green after a caution triggered by a collision between Power and Meyer Shank Racing’s David Malukas. In what could have transpired to be the fight for the win, Power appeared to cut down on Malukas, causing the latter to slide into the Turn 2 barrier.
Power survived that contact but promptly saw his day ended before racing had meaningfully resumed as Rossi vaulted up his rear wing after the restart misjudgement.
There was widespread displeasure towards Newgarden, who went on to win after the race resumed following the red flag, from certain drivers. Along with Power, Andretti Global’s Colton Herta was one to suggest the restart was unacceptably slow.
Rossi posted on X that “the good news” from the race is that his “Christmas list got shorter by at least two, maybe three” for this December.
“The rules have changed a lot this year,” McLaughlin said. “They were probably a bit lenient on jump-starts, whatnot, people getting runs before the green flag. My strategy all year in some ways has been to be as close as I can to the car in front. Most people are like that because you’re limiting the concertina effect that you have. I was right up Josef’s gearbox.”
It appeared that McLaughlin, second at the time and at the finish, made subtle contact with his race-leading teammate on the restart in question.
“It’s not up to me to review,” he added. “It’s an IndyCar thing. Personally I think he restarted very late. That was probably more the problem. I just wish we did a restart like we did on the last restart because I think we potentially could have had a first, second, third for the team, - or first, second, fourth.
“From my perspective, it didn’t need to happen. But I’m also not driving the No.2 car and no one else is but him. Ultimately we all make decisions. He thought that was the right restart to make. It sucks for everyone behind us. He got the win - doesn’t really matter for him. Will is crashed out and a few others… it sucks for the spectacle at the end.”
Power claimed Newgarden “went, he stopped, he went, he stopped” on the restart. And quoted by Arrow McLaren, Rossi said: “I don’t know what anyone can do in that situation when the leader is brake checking the field.”
But these suggestions have been quashed by Newgarden and the series, raising questions as to whether something else caused the incorrect perception that the race had resumed.
IndyCar suggests that the “standard restart procedure”, which sees the timing of the green flag dictated by when the leader accelerates within the restart zone, was followed.
Data offered by the series confirms Newgarden’s pace was “constant” and “never deviated from 80 miles an hour” despite Power suggesting it was changing. Newgarden accelerating was said to be “almost simultaneous” with the green flag.
“The procedure for race control is they’re watching your throttle,” Newgarden said. “When you commit to going, that’s when they throw the green or they initiate the green. There is a zone - they put a zone out every race. I was trying to go at the end of the zone, as late as you possibly could. It looked like there was just a mistime there.
“It looks like only one car really ran into one other pretty aggressively, at least from what I saw. It’s also possible that was just totally fine. If that one car didn’t have that problem, then we would have been alright.”
Newgarden did not shy away from the fact that he restarted late. But if it was illegally late, IndyCar has been known to abort starts and restarts if procedures are not followed correctly. The fact that this was not done and Newgarden was not penalised indicates nothing - in terms of the rules - was untoward.
“It was definitely late,” Newgarden said of his decision to wait until the end of the restart zone to restart the race. “I was trying to go as late as I could. Sometimes people go really early, sometimes they go in the middle, sometimes they go kind of late and sometimes they go really late.
“It’s not that different of a restart I’ve done before. I’ve done a lot of restarts from the front. It’s not that different from other restarts that have gone late. I don’t know that I’d change much. If anyone, especially on our team, wants to look at the data, you’re going to see a very consistent speed.”
In Newgarden’s eyes, something further back was the root cause of the incident. He had the impression that green flag conditions may have been deployed just before he accelerated rather than upon acceleration. Or there was an issue with drivers trying to anticipate or jump the restart as has been a past problem.
“What looked like happened is it went green momentarily before I went, just momentarily,” Newgarden said. “I’m talking like half-a-second or a second. If it’s just that slight difference in timing, if race control goes green and I haven’t gone yet for just a second, I think people were trying to jump, which we’ve had a problem with.”
Newgarden has caught the brunt of the blame. But given his speed has been confirmed to have not deviated, it has raised the question as to whether the issue was someone else in the pack being over-eager or looked to have accelerated too early.
“We’ve had a problem with jump-starts the last two years,” Newgarden added. “It’s a constant topic in the driver meeting. If there’s just a slight miscue there, I think people are very on edge on these restarts trying to get the run. It looked like it mistimed in the back, at least with one individual, and that’s what caused a problem.”
Newgarden said he would not change much about the way he managed that restart, albeit he did play it safer on the red flag restart. He marshalled that well and was unchallenged by McLaughlin during the sprint to the chequered flag.
“From my side, it’s the last thing you want to happen at the end,” Newgarden said. “I don’t want to create a wreck. I was not trying to do that. That was not my intention. The next time through I just went a little sooner… It looked like the green going slightly early was the big miscue - that’s my take seeing it from the car.”
As a result of the incident, Power has dropped from second to fourth in the championship standings, when at one stage during the race he was projected to close up to within 20 points of leader Alex Palou. Newgarden’s fault or not, the fact he has fallen to 66 points behind the championship lead is an understandable cause for frustration.
“I know Will pretty well,” Newgarden said. “I get that he’s upset - he got wrecked out of the race. He’s a championship contender. When you get run into, especially after the night he had - he had a great night, a fast car, he drove super well, he led two-thirds of this thing - imagine how he feels.
“I think he’s going to try to place blame wherever he directly sees it right off the bat. He gets hot quickly. I think when you calm down and look at it, it’s probably not going to be exactly what he thought it was in the moment. But the point is, he’s going to be upset because this is not good for his championship.
“Believe me, the last thing I want to happen is for Will to get hit. I can tell you that right now. If I go and sit with my boss tonight, he’s going to look at me and say: ‘Did you do a good job tonight?’ I want him to think I did a good job every single night that I see him.”
It is not the first time he has been involved in some internal contention at Penske in recent events. Only one race prior, it was Power that collided with teammate McLaughlin in Toronto, sending McLaughlin out of the race, earning himself a penalty and damaging the championship bids of both when running fourth and fifth.
“We’re big boys,” said McLaughlin, who dealt his own gesticulations to his teammate north of the border last month. “It is what it is. It’s just hot under the collar, getting to the business end of the season. We all know Will, he wears his emotions on his sleeve. That’s why we love him. We’ll just discuss and get on.
“All three of us, without sounding like an idiot or, excuse my language, a w**ker, we’re all very good and we’re pushing each other to a very high level. We want to be that guy. I think it’s always going to get tight at different points.
“We just had an unfortunate situation the last couple of events. After Toronto, we were just fine. I’m sure it will be the same moving forward.”
Newgarden shared a similar sentiment about the latest piece of aggro and said he was keen to speak to Power as soon as his post-race media obligations were complete. In any case, with four races remaining in 2024, tensions are beginning to fray through the field.
“I’ll go talk to him immediately once I get done with you guys,” Newgarden said. “I don’t know where he’s at - he might be out of here. As soon as I see him, I’ll talk to him.”
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