Indy Racing League Teleconference Transcript
Friday, November 19, 2009
AN INTERVIEW WITH WILL POWER AND TIM CINDRIC
THE MODERATOR:
Good afternoon and welcome today's IZOD IndyCar Series
teleconference. Earlier today, Penske Racing made an announcement that Will
Power will be driving the No. 12 Verizon Wireless Honda-powered Dallara
full-time in the IZOD IndyCar Series in 2010. We're joined today by Will
Power and Tim Cindric, president of Penske Racing. Gentlemen, thank you for
joining us today.
TIM CINDRIC:
That IZOD IndyCar Series sounds good.
THE MODERATOR:
It sure does. Will, it's very exciting news for you
today. Almost like a dream come true to kind of stick with Penske Racing for
2010 full-time.
WILL POWER:
Yeah, absolutely. Very happy to be part of the Verizon
Wireless Penske Racing Team. It is a dream come true. It's something I've
worked very hard for my whole career to end up in a place like this. I think
that we have a very strong driver lineup for next year, and we'll be
expecting to win a lot of races.
Q:
Tim, the last time we had you on a teleconference, you talked about
Will and how he fit with the team. What does he bring to Penske Racing and
why make this decision to bring him on board full-time?
TIM CINDRIC:
Obviously the results speak for themselves last year.
We're excited to be able to give (Will) the opportunity to come on
full-time, because he's done an excellent job in a very difficult situation.
It seems like so long ago that he was sitting here and his fate was
depending on Helio (Castroneves') fate. Now he's independent of all of those
things and continues to perform. It was great that Verizon was able to
support us going forward, and we were in a position to be able to keep Will
and that Will continued to on believe that this is the place to be, even
though he kind of had to wait this out a little bit.
Q:
This the first time since the mid '90s, that Penske Racing will
field three full-time cars in the Indy Car series Last time you had Paul
Tracy, (Emerson) Fittipaldi and Al Unser, Jr. Can you tell us why the team
made the decision to expand?
TIM CINDRIC:
The opportunity was there. It's not every day that you
have an opportunity like we have to put three proper programs together with
your three very capable drivers. All the moons aligned for us, and we feel
obviously that this is a great opportunity for all of us.
Q:
Will, last time you were in a car, a little bit of a nightmare
situation, getting injured. What is your status? How are you feeling?
WILL POWER:
I'm feeling good. Everything's going well. It's actually
ahead of schedule the way my back healed. I'm in the gym every day. I'm
working out with the PitFit guys. I can't believe in a mont, in just one
month, how far I've come. I'm swimming. I'm on the row machine, doing
weights.
I don't think there's going to be any problem getting back in the car
in January. That is sort of my plan. I'll probably be cleared to drive
before then, but to get back to full cardio fitness I think I need to wait
until January.
Q:
Tim, you've got two Aussies now (with Will and Ryan Briscoe). James
Davison is waiting in the wings, so perhaps you can fit him in. But to be
serious, you've got three very aggressive drivers, good guys. But how do you
temper them or see tempering them next year? Each one will want to win a
championship. Will it be team orders or will every race be won on the day?
TIM CINDRIC:
I think they are known quantities, which is a good thing.
We're not going into a season with three drivers which we haven't worked
with one of them or multiple guys. With Helio and Ryan, they've seen two
seasons together now to where their circumstances have been different. Where
Helio was challenging for the championship in 2008, Ryan had to play a bit
of a role there. You know, the shoe was on the other foot at the end of this
year.
Those guys I know that they understand what's good for the team is
good for them. You know, they also understand, and Will can attest this year
with the races that he ran with us, that we were able to supply them all
equal equipment, and let the best man win. That's typically been the
philosophy.
Number one rule is always don't run into each other. So I think that,
again, I'm just glad that we're going into a known situation. These are
people that have all worked together, and we've been through some good times
and some tough times together with all three of them.
So last year I think everybody got to put their feet on the ground,
and I think we know where we're headed.
Q:
We talked last summer, and you said if Roger Penske can't find a
sponsor in this economy, nobody can. And you guys ran Verizon on Will's car
a couple times. Just can you talk about the length of the contract at all?
What would have happened if you couldn't have secured a sponsorship with
Verizon full-time? Would you have still retained Will for six or seven races
like you did this year?
TIM CINDRIC:
I always hate to speculate, because I don't know how it
would have exactly turned out. But we would have done everything we could to
keep him in the fold. We certainly would have approached him with here's
what we can do. And we would have done everything we can to at least run him
in Indianapolis next year and see if there was something that came ahead of
time, depending on how long he was willing to wait.
But obviously with the result that he had had last year there's
probably going to be more people knocking on his door if they found out that
he was available. So we did everything we could on that front. And (Verizon
Wireless CEO) Lowell McAdam and everybody at Verizon Wireless, they
certainly have really put together a good relationship with Will. They've
got a great relationship with our organization, and really this program is
an extension of the whole Verizon Championship Racing program that already
exists within Penske with Justin Allgaier in the Nationwide Series, and Brad
Keselowski in the (Sprint) Cup series.
So it was a great fit for us. Obviously they also were participants in
our Grand Am program last year, and sponsors of our Grand Am program last
year. So we're essentially running an IndyCar program for the first time
full season for them. So that's how that all turns out.
It's certainly a multi-year extension from the programs he we already
have.
Q:
Will Will's contract be multi-year also?
TIM CINDRIC:
We haven't even talked about that, have we, Will? We're
just trying to worry about this coming year. All Will has to do is win races
and he'll be fine.
Q:
Is it going to be yellow like it was this season?
TIM CINDRIC:
The Verizon car was black and red.
Q:
No, the yellow car that you had painted at Sonoma?
TIM CINDRIC:
The truck leasing car?
Q:
Well, I'm 60 years old. Sorry I missed that?
TIM CINDRIC:
No, black and red.
Q:
Black and red, thank you.
TIM CINDRIC:
Yep.
Q:
If I could, Will is considered to be a gasser, a guy that's not
afraid to push it. You have two other guys there that are pretty good
drivers themselves. How much do you kind of see the three of them pushing
each other and getting all three of them maybe to step up a notch or two?
TIM CINDRIC:
It's always a challenge, but it's a good problem to have.
The guys not only the drivers, but the crew itself, you know, we have to
remember that we're an organization. We're not three one-car teams. That's
always a challenge.
Whether it's this series or the Cup series or whatever else it is. For
us it's pretty easy when you have a guy like Roger, it works for us -- or we
work for it, I should say. For us when things get out of line, we usually
hit the reset button and sit down and talk about it. The good news is we've
got the right kind of personalities to be able to do that.
We're all competitive, and sometimes that gets the best of you. But
I've seen all these guys in difficult situations that way. They've all come
to the right conclusion at the end of the day. You know, that's the respect
we have for the guy we all work for.
Q:
Will, obviously you were very impressed with what Penske Racing
could do for you last year. With the victory that you had at Edmonton and
all that, even after you got injured, how confident were you that you were
going to be able to stick with the plan and stick with this team?
WILL POWER:
It was like Tim said, it was a matter of waiting it out. I
think I would have stayed there no matter what, because it was a great
situation for me to be driving there. Every time I was in the car, it was a
good car. It's no use running around the back of the field with a team
that's sort of not up for the job, because you don't do yourself any favors.
But it was for me a great year, although it ended badly, now it's
turned out to be, it was just a very good decision for me to go there. I
really look forward to it. I'd like to thank Verizon Wireless, and Lowell
McAdam, and John Stratton for putting all this together and giving me this
fantastic opportunity.
Q:
What was the motivation behind signing Will for a full season? I
don't ask that to sound overly stupid, but I ask that because looking at
Ganassi last year where Dario (Franchitti) and (Scott) Dixon basically every
race were running more in tandem and scoring maximum points. Ryan more often
than you would have liked seemed to be out there gutting by himself. Helio
certainly had great races. But in terms of a two-pronged attack, maybe
didn't have that happening all the time. Is Will kind of represent the
ability for your organization to have the race-in, race-out minimum two cars
gathering as many points as possible to help fight back against the Ganassi
Team?
TIM CINDRIC:
To be honest, we don't make too many of our decisions
dependent on what one team is or what the competition is. We have to look at
the things that we can control and the things that we have to do a better
job of.
So definitely these decisions aren't based on what Ganassi's doing or
what they're not doing. They may change their game as well. You can't be
reactive, you have to work on anticipation.
When I look back to Edmonton and the opportunities we had to run one,
two, three there at Edmonton, we didn't quite get it done, but we were
certainly in the right position.
That's what these guys are capable of. When I look at the championship
and so forth, if you look at laps completed last year and you look at the
two guys that are at the top of laps completed, they're also the two guys at
the top of the charts.
To me that was the difference between this year and last year. They
made less mistakes and they did a better job when the opportunities were
there. They were able to execute to take advantage of those opportunities.
And we just missed it on that front.
With Helio it was a difficult year and one that he certainly wasn't
full stride there at the beginning. So next year we're looking at hitting
that in a whole different way. We're looking at ourselves very
constructively to determine what is it that we need to do to be better.
Because we certainly we didn't get everything right on the teams in the end
of the year.
Continued in part 2
