THE MODERATOR: A couple questions for Will. Congratulations, Will, great race. You came up a little bit short. Tell us how you feel and talk about how you think the season went for you overall.
WILL POWER: Yeah, it would have been nice to win the last race of the season, considering we had pretty good pace in qualifying. The car was a little bit too loose coming down the straight. But as the season goes, we’ve had the pace all year, we’ve just had really bad luck in the races with mechanical failure and a couple other things.
I think that we’ll be strong next year. I think we learned a lot in how to win a championship this year and what not to do. I look forward to it, good result the last race. It’s about time we finished on the podium. Yeah, looking forward to next year.
THE MODERATOR: Obviously you had several great races with Sebastien this year. You’ve raced against him now for two straight seasons. Put in perspective his career from your perspective.
WILL POWER: Yeah, he’s the best and most complete race driver I’ve ever raced against. He’s always working at it, and he’s just looking at every single aspect. He’s not just a really quick driver, he’s very technical and very good on the engineering side of things. He’s been the pacesetter for four years in Champ Car, and he really deserves a Formula 1 chance, and I think he’s going to do a really good job there.
Q. You seem to have been saving the Push to Pass power toward the end. Why do you think you weren’t able to gain much when you were finally able to use that?
WILL POWER: Yeah, in the last five or six laps, everyone was using it. Maybe that’s due to the selected red tire because it wasn’t a complete spin. If you had red tires, there was only a five lap stretch at the end, and he had an advantage. I could see Oriol wascatching me and he was on reds. I think if we were on reds there might have been a shot at passing Sebastien, but he was very quick. They were very quick, and his car lasted through all the stints, maybe even off a little bit at the end. He just kept the pace up.
Q. Will, could you take us through those last five or six laps? You were using the Push to Pass on the straightaway and you were gaining on him on the straightaway but then with two or three laps left it sort of equalized. You had the Push to Pass power advantage at the start of the race, but - at the start of that last yellow. Did you think that that - were you pretty confident at that point that you’d get him?
WILL POWER: Well, my problem was coming down the straight I was very loose so I couldn’t get a good run, so I wasn’t able to use it to the maximum. Sebastien had 30 seconds left, so five laps to go he just hit it down the straight. Like I said, I think if I had reds we would have had a better shot at getting him. He was really quick. It’s good for racing if everyone pushes to the maximum limit at the end of a race, especially if there’s a bit of racing. There wasn’t today.
Q. Will, early in the race when Sebastien passed you, he was using the Push to Pass. Any thoughts on you had extra power given the situation at the start of the race. Was there any thought in your mind to use it to defend yourself?
WILL POWER: Yeah, I did actually. I used it too late. Otherwise I would have held the position. It’s pretty tough to pass around here, and knowing that he had less Push to Pass than me, I should have defended a lot earlier. But that’s how it went, unfortunately.
| 
|