Will Power reacts to his IndyCar win in Wisconsin on Sunday.
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The four-time IndyCar champion was one of two retirements during the 50-lap race, and has therefore dropped from second in the drivers’ championship to fourth behind the Team Penske trio.
He’ll start in the front row for the 202-mile Kohler Grand Prix on Sunday with a qualifying-best lap of 141.379 miles per hour.
After outlasting Tony Kanaan and Graham Rahal in the closing laps, the 2014 series victor Will Power took first place again this year. A good first stint got us up near Pagenaud.
“It has just about all the varieties that you want on a road course”.
MAX ATTACK: Rookie Max Chilton qualified a career-best seventh, one better than his start at Phoenix on April 2.
“Absolutely we can”, he said. It’s really a shame as we had really good pace in the auto and I think would have been in contention for the win. “I think we could have had [Power], sure”.
Newgarden suffered a broken clavicle and a small fracture to his right hand at Texas Motor Speedway two weeks ago after he was collected in Conor Daly’s incident and the two crashed hard into the outside wall.
Despite having sat out the opening race of the season at St Petersburg due to illness, Power still believes he is in contention for the championship, and now is only 81 points behind series leader and team-mate Simon Pagenaud with seven races to run.
But Tony Kanaan passed Pagenaud on the 46th lap and he quickly faded back to the middle of the pack.
Kanaan shaved about a half-second off the gap with Power after the white flag flew.
“For me, it’s been a long time coming, trying to chase this one for quite some time”, Bourdais said Friday in between Road America practice sessions.
“It’s kind of the European version of the Indy 500”, said Scott Dixon, part of a team that drove the No. 69 Ford GT to a third-place class finish.
“We had a really good race going in this wonderful setting at Road America”, Pagenaud said.
The Kohler Grand Prix may turn out to be the beginning of a championship comeback for Power. “When you see a crowd like this, it’s electrifying, I think, for all of us, and we love it. We love it”. Now Pagenaud had the same tires (Firestone blacks) as the leader – his Team Penske teammate Will Power – and he was ready to attack for the lead and the race win. Scott Dixon starts 2nd, and won on IndyCar’s return in Phoenix.
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“Not real sure (what happened)”, Dixon said. The 22 drivers made it through a few corners before Charlie Kimball and Juan Pablo Montoya had light mid-pack contact, which came just before Kimball struck the back of Sebastien Bourdais’ vehicle. It was that close because of the race’s only full-course caution that created a restart with seven laps to go.
