Will Power, driver of the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske car, and Dario Franchitti, the driver of the No. 10 Target Chip Ganassi Racing car.
Will has the 12 point lead over Dario in the points standing; and for the fifth straight year the championship will be decided in the final race.
Q. Will, as the points leader, you get the first question. Can you just talk a little bit about the season that you’ve had so far and about fighting it out with Dario for what could be your first championship here in America.
WILL POWER: Yeah, I mean, it’s been my best season to date, my entire career. And going into this season I guess a few months, I wasn’t even sure I would be full time.
So it was a great start. And it continued through the whole season. And I think this is the first time I’ve been in the position in my career where I’ve got all the tools to win races. A fantastic team that has all the engineering and all the personnel to give you the best possible chance of winning, the best equipment.
So the only thing that I saw coming this season that would be tough for me is really getting up to speed on ovals, which I have. And I feel as though I’ve learned a lot and I feel I’m in a position to win on ovals now.
So, yeah, it’s been a great season.
Q Dario, you’ve been in this title fight situation before. And you came out on top last year and in 2007. Do you approach this final race any differently from the years past?
DARIO FRANCHITTI: I don’t think so. We know how to get the job done. The guys at Team Target know how to win it too. We’re not going to go out and change our game plan. We’re going to go out to win the race. We’ve got to make up the points. We’ve got to get a 13 point advantage, which is not going to be easy, but we think we’ve got we’ve got the equipment to do it. We know how to do it. So we’ve been talking about a lot this week about the ins and outs and the championships and the points.
At this point we just want to get on the track and fight out there.
Q. Dario, I know that in 1999 you had that great points race with Juan Pablo Montoya. You did basically everything you could do except win more races than him. You ended up tied. What did you learn from that championship battle? And also how difficult was it from 2000 until 2007 before you were really in the thick of another chance to win the championship?
DARIO FRANCHITTI: I think what I learned there, Bruce, is that every point counts. Whether it’s the first race, the fifth race, the last race, every single one of those points count. And that’s something I’ve definitely tried to kind of to put into practice, I guess.
And I think the speed’s always been there. The trick is to get and the consistency was there. The other times, it’s to get the speed and the consistency working together.
Between 2000 and 2002 I think we were in the championship battle I think until the last race. And then sort of 2005 we were reasonably competitive. We just had crappy luck. When 2007 came along and we really had a series challenge after that, that was a good feeling. Obviously did that again last year.
It was nice to finally get those championship wins after years of winning a lot of races but not closing the championships out.
Q. Will, I know that in 2007 you were over in Champ Car, but does it kind of amaze you to a large degree that the last three seasons that Dario has raced in IndyCar, that he’s been involved in a down to the end last race of the championship battle?
WILL POWER: Does it surprise me? Not really. I mean, he’s been in great teams, and he’s a very strong, consistent driver. So you would expect him to be up there every year that he’s racing. So, yeah, that’s the answer to your question.
Q. Looks like you’ve got a strong 2011 schedule, but obviously Homestead is not on it. I was wondering if you were surprised that it was not on the schedule at all, and whether or not you guys will miss the track?
DARIO FRANCHITTI: I think from my point of view, somewhere I’ll miss it. It’s a good challenging driver’s track. It’s probably one of the one and a half mile ovals that really puts a lot of the control of what happens as far as results, puts it in the driver’s hand, drives almost like a short oval. So from that point of view I’ll miss it. But I totally understand the IndyCar Series, the choices that we’ve made and picking out some new partners and some new promoters.
So I think we’ve got to do what’s best for the IndyCar Series and go forward accordingly. While we’ll miss the track, I understand what Randy Bernard and the guys at the Series are doing.
Q. Will, how about you?
WILL POWER: No, I feel the same way. I haven’t done that many miles on this track. But testing on Monday, it seems to me that it’s a really good track for, a driver’s track and also good for racing, can run a lot of different lanes.
And it’s a great venue down here as well. You know you’re in a great area. But IndyCar needs to go where it’s best for the series. And at the moment that’s obviously the direction that Randy Bernard’s going.
So I hope that we actually end upcoming back down here in the future some time. But for now it’s what it is. I mean, I look forward to the new tracks we’ll be going to next year.
Q. Both of you, we know you are going to fight for the championship. But there will be 25 other cars around you. Some other teammates, they might help you, might not. But there are some slow cars, too. How do you approach that? Because that will be very tense for everybody. But for both of you, especially, how do you guys approach this situation?
DARIO FRANCHITTI: I think the other guys on the track, they’ve got their own reasons. They’re trying to win the race the same as any other race. So I completely understand that situation. And as long as I think they race with the same respect that they have all season, then I think we’ll be okay. Some of the slower cars, I think, they really are just hanging on. So there’s a couple of cars that I think really, certainly one that’s difficult enough to run a consistent lane. So I don’t think you can expect much more.
WILL POWER: Yeah, I mean, actually traffic always seems to be a bit of a factor in these races. I know can certainly decide the outcome of the race sometimes, especially when it’s close. That’s part of the series. You know how it is. And I think it’s actually a part of most series. But it seems to make a bigger impact on ovals because they’re racing in a lot tighter quarters.
And, like I said, those guys are racing for their career and jobs and sponsors, and some are fighting to get in that top 20 as well for next year.
So it’s something that we have to deal with. I would say 99 percent of the field know exactly what they’re doing out there. And they’re all great drivers and usually very courteous.
Q. You were 34 years old before you finally won a championship or an Indy 500. Either one. Did you have a period where you started to think, well, I gotta have I gotta have something that I can define this career by. I ask you that because Power still doesn’t have something like that that he can put to his name and he’s a champion of this. Can you talk about the importance of that?
DARIO FRANCHITTI: For me it was more about trying to win the next race, it wasn’t about trying to define a career or any of that stuff about the history books, whatever. It was just about I want to get back to winning races, consistently win races.
Like I say, I said to you before, on a number of occasions we’ve won a lot of races but didn’t have the Indy 500 or championship. And I really wanted both those things.
So it was kind of a relief when they both came around the first time. And a lot nicer when they came around the second time, too.
Q. It’s starting to add up. I was asking you that also, in terms of Will’s perspective, I know that’s for Will to answer but Will may not understand quite fully what it means to add something like that to his career.
DARIO FRANCHITTI: Unfortunately, my job is to make sure he doesn’t discover it for a little while yet. But, yeah, he’s done very, very well. He’s very fast and the wins are starting to add up and he’s put together a good championship season this year.
But like I say, my job is to try my very best on Saturday night to make him wait at least another year for a championship.
Q. Will, Dario has been chipping away very steadily ever since the series went back to the ovals in Chicagoland, and I think your lead then was like 59 points. It’s down now to what it is. Have you found your anxiety level going up each week? How are you handling this, this relentless pressure by Dario?
WILL POWER: Actually been quite relaxed. I remember the race in Japan, I said to Roger, “I feel very kind of relaxed about the whole thing.”
Yeah, I mean the thing is in all those races we’ve been at the front. I led at Chicagoland. I led at Kentucky. Been there, it just hasn’t worked out. The anxiety level, I’m actually quite relaxed.
I think when it comes down to it, comes to the race, I’m very focused on what I want to do and if it comes time to be very aggressive, I will. If not, I’ll just race my normal race. I’ll be aware of exactly what I have to do on the weekend.
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