IZOD IndyCar Series: Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

Topics:  Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

Will Power
March 29, 2010

ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA

AMY KONRATH: Justin, Ryan, congratulations on the podium and we'll see you in Barber.
We are now joined by our race winner, Will Power. This is his second consecutive win of the 2010 Izod IndyCar Series season. He is the second driver to post back-to-back wins. The last to do that was Sam Hornish, Jr. in 2001. That season Sam went on to win the championship.
Will, two wins under your belt, points lead, how much confidence does that give you going into the rest of the season?
WILL POWER: Yep, that's a fantastic start, I don't think you could ask for much better. You can't really -- I don't think there is anything better than winning, unless there is some other position.
Very happy for the Verizon guys, working hard over the winter. And this is my first full season on a good team, so I'm just putin' it altogether and using my experience over the past four years over here.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: No, that's nothing. It's just a little blister that I had in Brazil. It's no problem. It won't be there the next race, so...

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: No, I don't think I got a piece of the wall. The sticky stuff was peeling off, and I got some on the mirror and I was thinking they need to have something that doesn't fall apart when people touch that but, no, I didn't -- I don't think I touched the wall, did I?

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: I was getting pretty close. Wilson pushes you hard; he doesn't back off. He's very good.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: No, I'm just aware that it's only race 2 of 17. To win a championship doesn't matter if you win two races and then have a heap of bad ones. You've got to win as much as you can. You've got to go into every race thinking, okay, I've got to win, but if you can't, you have to make the most of it, and that's my thought and thinking.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: Yeah, I just was very careful. I knew it was easy to slip up there, and also those reds, they went off pretty badly. You could see it was Marco -- I wasn't even aware, I thought something happened to him and he came back out of the pits, but he went out and was leading the race, but he was on it early.
His tires went off, so almost a good thing to look after. My thought after morning warm-ups, was, man, these tires go off bad; you have to be pretty nice to them if you want them to last the spin.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: Um, you know, I looked at the weather and every hour it got better. I knew at some point this race was going to be dry. I thought for sure we were going to be starting on wet, but then we started out on dry, and it's great for racing. It's the same thing in Brazil, you put weather into the equation and people are passing and it was a great first lap, you know, great for the fans, and that's what we need for the series, you know?

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: I remember getting airlifted. I didn't get knocked out in that accident, and I was in a lot of pain and honestly I didn't care about anything at that point, but then when I got to the hospital I thought, I wonder if I'm going to have a ride next year, but Roger gave me confidence pretty quickly and said, "Don't worry, we'll have something for ya no matter what." And that's the sort of guy he is.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: Vito came and saw me in the hospital the next day, and he's like bending down touching his toes. He had exactly the same injury and he said, "Man, you'll be right. You'll get back to your full strength." And you see he is back in a go-kart and whatnot, so I knew it was not going to be a problem getting back to full finish. The back is still sore but it doesn't affect me in the car, and I'm doing everything I was doing before.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: It was just gradual, you know, start out walkin' and then doing some weights and then you start -- last thing you can do is run, and by Christmastime I was running. It was just a gradual process. There wasn't anything hard about it, you had to keep at it.
One thing, I lost the fitness that I had. At that point when I broke my back I was the fittest I ever was, and then I was at a very low fitness when I started getting back into it, and now I'm back to where I was.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: Um, yeah, I think if it had been a complete dry race it would have made it easy, but every single street course we have you're almost guaranteed to have a yellow before you stop, and then you have people who have gone off strategy and then you have to go back, so it's hard to tell. You can't tell what's going to happen in a race. The more it's mixed up the better it is for the fans, see some good racing.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: No, I've been doing a lot of P.R. stuff. I'm sure he'll be calling me straight up to say, "You know, you should have won by a lot more!" (Chuckles.)

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: I just do heaps of ab work, you know, to hold that solid. Doing the rowing machine, that does great feedback, a lot of swimming, running is the worst thing for it, it's constant pounding.
I don't really -- unless I bend or have to sit on a plane for a long time, it's not an issue.

Q. (No microphone.)
WILL POWER: No, just really happy for Verizon to have the first Indycar win, and then Justin Allgaier goes and wins the first Nationwide race, and then we win again; it's three weeks in a row, so I'm hopin' to keep 'em excited and keep 'em in the series.
AMY KONRATH: Will, we'll let you go. Congratulations and we'll see you in Barber.