Will Power’s domination at Sonoma Prix- last year in hospital bed, this time at the top of the podium
Coming up with one of the most dominating and shocking performances of the IndyCar the calendar year saw is Will Power win the Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma. The win helped him take away the winning trophy for the fifth time on a road course. Will Power previous hadn’t managed better than 23rd position here, therefore it came as a shock to many also keeping in mind the fact that that he had been involved in a heavy accident last time he was on this track.
The first lap of the race saw an accident and like the previous years Will wanted to avoid any such situations and he along with his teammate Helio Castroneves got ahead of the pack. Will decided with his teammate that they would try their best to keep Dario Franchitti below the second position.
The accident that however took place saw Dan Wheldon’s car turn upside down after the nose of his car smashed against the pit wall which many feared that might be fatal for the driver but he emerged out of his car unscratched. Wheldon was disappointed talking about the fact as he reportedly said that his car was one of the strongest contenders for the win this weekend.
However, the race saw the championship leader, Will Power dominate and lead throughout the race except for the time when he went into the pits and lost the lead for a few laps. The dominating and winning performance would however not have been possible without the Team Penski teammates. The Penski team ensured that their driver maintained a gap between himself and the competitive Target Chip Ganassi cars.
The finals standings saw the Australian driver, Will Power finish ahead of the rest of the pack with Scott Dixon behind him and Dario Franchitti in third position. The race, however saw a dramatic end as Will was chased down by Scott Dixon but his red tyres degraded and he was able to manage the second position only .7432 seconds a drift off the leader. For what we heard about Scott Dixon’s car, all the drivers greatly commented in favour of the Firestone with the job they did with two types of tyres. The drivers said that with the amount of tyre wear seen at the track it is commendable that the tyres still gave them opportunities to reach the drivers ahead of them and manage to pass them.
The tyre wear led to strategy and setup changes that meant that there was an exciting race on our hands. The race proved to be full of action throughout its duration. This was also somewhat better if we talk about the cars crashing out. Only three cars went out with more than a dozen cars losing their parts. The major and only accident of the race took place almost at the end of the race when Danica Patrick lost her top 10 finish after colliding with Takuma Sato. However one of the amazing things that IndyCar history witnessed was the fact that Danica manage to somehow limp her car past the chequered flag in 16th position after the collision.
Reports said that Will Power got his revenge from the track as he managed to dominate the race, which in 2009 affectively took him out of the season after a major crash involving him and Nelson Phillippe. As reward for his consistent performances this season, many said that it was a risk giving him a full time driver job, Roger Penski the team head rewarded him with a car that he would be in this year full time with Verizon sponsorship.
After winning the race the driver said that last year he saw the race in a hospital bed and today it feels ecstatic to have won the race.
With this race win the Australian is able to establish a 59 point lead over the second place man Dario Franchitti. Scott Dixon is a further 95 points behind the leader.
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