Power buoyed despite turbulent Andretti start: “I’m in a position to win a championship”
- Archie O’Reilly
- Mar 25
- 6 min read
“There you go. Good on you. Really, really solid,” Will Power chuckles sarcastically, as he finally appears. “The tech is quite complicated for us guys in our 40s.”
After arriving home a little more than 10 minutes into a Tuesday media call, he has been grappling with a phone-holding contraption. For the beginning of the availability, to which he was already five minutes late, he was in transit, without visuals and had already lost signal once. Now home, switching the camera on was the issue.
“You guys love a bit of a disaster in a press conference, right?” he exclaims. In classic Power fashion, things have descended into chaos. And it is all his hilarious own doing.
Ironically, all because of an incident the antithesis of one of his great IndyCar strengths.
“Oh my God! You know why I’m in this predicament? I ran out of bloody gas, literally driving up the driveway of the gas station,” he shares, with photographic evidence promptly following from his wife Liz. “So I had to go in, buy a gas can, put some gas in the thing, drive it up to the fuel bowser, get some gas. And that’s why I’m running a bit behind here.
“I’m pretty good at fuel save… I don’t know my road car as well as my race car. I was literally a few metres short. That’s how close I like to run it, you know?”
In some ways, it was an apt metaphor for the beginning of his Andretti Global career across IndyCar’s season-opening triple-header: coming agonisingly close and suffering something of a disaster, but recovering and ending it all smiles.
No doubt, it has been a turbulent start to his first season with the team. He crashed out of the race on an incident-marred St. Petersburg weekend, before then suffering a cut tyre after contact with Christian Rasmussen when leading at Phoenix Raceway the following weekend, having recovered from the rear after a qualifying crash.
But it has also been a start to the year rife with potential - part of which has already been realised last time out in Arlington. A third-place finish in only his third race with Andretti marked early lift-off for Power’s new chapter after the tumultuous start.
“We’ve been on the pace, I’ll tell you,” he insists. “Definitely been on pace. Andretti is a bloody good team. The cars are good. We’re fast. We’re at the front.
“It did look slow but you’ve got to remember we were leading at Phoenix. I think St. Pete would have been a top five, for sure. It really hurt me in the points. It’s unfortunate but I know we’re going to have chances of wins this year. I know we’re going to be fighting at the front.
“I’m finding myself being able to be in the top five each weekend. Honestly, last year [with Team Penske] that wasn’t the case for me. At times, we struggled a lot.”
Especially with three races in three weekends to kick off the year, Power admits he has “never been so busy” as he gets up to speed with new systems and new people. The one-week break before IndyCar’s trip to Alabama has been welcome in that respect, giving a chance to debrief the good and the bad and continue to improve his adaptation.
After 17 years with Team Penske, the unfamiliarity of a change of team, even for a two-time series champion and Indianapolis 500 winner, was always going to be a shock to the system. But already, Power is liking what he sees and is tapping into his own experience, including 45 wins and an all-time-leading 71 poles, in order to try and elevate the team.
“They definitely do things a different way,” he assesses. “But their preparation, they’re a very, very well-put-together team. The way they do their debriefs is very military-like. They certainly have good processes put in place. Not quite as lax in that respect as Penske.
“In some respects, they have more resource than where I came from. They definitely have more people there. It’s interesting. I can see why we’re running at the front. The team is very good. I am very impressed. We’re improving as well as we go, doing a lot of work.
“Obviously they’ve also had feedback from [a driver] from another team that’s been at another team for a long time, giving feedback on how the car feels from what I’m used to, make it a bit easier for me to drive. It’s something that is good for the team directionally.”
After three rounds, Kyle Kirkwood leads the championship for Andretti by 26 points ahead of four-peat-searching Álex Palou. Owing to his DNF and 16th-place result in the first two rounds, Power is 67 points off the lead in 12th. But he continues to aim high.
Andretti are without a championship since Ryan Hunter-Reay’s 2012 crown, since which no team has been able to break the duopoly of Penske and Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR). But having come into this season suggesting Andretti would be serious contenders again within three years, Power has already revised his claim to reflect loftier ambitions.
“Andretti has always been one of the top teams [but] there’s only been two teams winning championships. This year, I really believe I’m in a position to win a championship. Next year, absolutely. Absolutely. But this year, we’re there already, making gains immediately.
“I tell them: ‘You’ve got everything you need to win a championship.’”
Weekends like Arlington - with Kirkwood winning, Power third and Marcus Ericsson fourth - are not necessarily the fuel for his theory; Andretti’s street course package is expected to be field-topping. But it is elevating areas of weakness that gives Power immense hope.
With Andretti’s road-course package not consistently front-running in recent times - with no wins in the discipline since 2022 - Barber will be another crucial test. But with the team having struggled across the late-season batch of short ovals in 2025, their Phoenix performance, ending with Kirkwood runner-up, has particularly encouraged Power.
“Because one of those races was a short oval and we were contending for a win there… that was a weakness last year,” Power justifies, speaking on his title claim. “Man, I feel like I could have contended for a win at every race this season. So the pace is there. The ingredients are there to contend for a championship. It’s been strong.
“Obviously this is the next discipline coming up. It will be even more telling: where do we stand on road courses? That was a place the team felt they needed to work on last year.
“Yeah, that’s why I said that. I’m like: ‘We’re there.’ The team is leading the championship. Two rough races at the beginning; if I just finish Phoenix, I’m right there. That’s the reason I said that - because I believe that.”
Of course, Power still sees four-time champion Palou as the benchmark and driver to beat. But after all, he remains the only other driver to have won the championship during Palou’s five years with CGR, having won his second title in 2022.
Following Arlington, he joked about Palou’s lack of an onboard camera. But rather than any great conspiracy, it comes from a place of respect for the competitor he will have to usurp if he is to fulfil his championship prophecy in year one with Andretti.
“I just want to see the man in action. I want to look at his driving. I admire it. It was more about that. I don’t think he’s hiding [anything]. I was only joking.
“We’re all looking very closely at Palou. If you look at the other Ganassi drivers, they’re not on that level at all. He’s definitely set a standard that I haven’t seen for a long time. You can’t have a weakness, ultimately, because he will get you. You cannot make a mistake.”
Unleashed now after a chaotic start, Power is buoyant in the early stages of his Andretti career. There remains a long way to go to become the team’s first champion in 14 years, but even through the early turbulence, this is a collaboration off to a flying start.
Comments