IndyCar: What has been the highlight of Will Power’s 2019 season?

By Asher Fair | Jul 27, 2019

FORT WORTH, TEXAS - JUNE 07: Will Power of Australia, driver of the #12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, looks on during US Concrete Qualifying Day for the NTT IndyCar Series - DXC Technology 600 at Texas Motor Speedway on June 07, 2019 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images) /

Will Power has had a 2019 IndyCar season full of misfortune. What has been the highlight of his year through the first 12 races?

Team Penske’s Will Power sits in fifth place in the IndyCar championship standings with 12 of the season’s 17 races having been contested. While fifth in the standings is a position that many drivers would enjoy the luxury of having, his fifth in the standings has him in the midst of his worst season driving for Team Penske.

Power has driven full-time for Team Penske since the 2010 season, and he entered the 2019 season with a career-low finish of fifth place in the championship standings in the 2017 season. He still managed to win three races throughout the 2017 season, however, a total that trailed only the win total of teammate and champion Josef Newgarden.

But this season, Power is winless. He earned his most recent victory in the race at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway last August.

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Power’s 2019 season has been riddled with misfortune. So what has been the highlight of his year?

There are still several candidates — after all, fifth place in the championship standings is nothing to scoff at — but pretty much all of these candidates have their own distinct drawbacks to them.

The only true highlight has been his third place finish in the season opener on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, which in itself was a bit of a disappointment after he started the race from the pole position.

Power dominated the inaugural IndyCar race at Circuit of the Americas, leading the first 45 laps of the 60-lap race, but after he was caught out by a caution flag period that would have sent him toward the middle of the field for the ensuing restart, his car experienced a driveshaft issue that prevented him from finishing the race, and he was officially scored in 24th (last) place.

Power had a strong showing in the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but as the defending winning of the race, he naturally wanted more than a fifth place finish. Unfortunately for him, he very well could have had it had a penalty for hitting one of his pit crew members not taken him out of contention and forced him to rally just to finish in the top five.

After a disastrous first race on the Raceway on Belle Isle, which took place largely due to a loose wheel that rolled off of his car following his pit stop, the second race at the track appeared to be going the same way. He was involved in a first-lap incident, and shortly thereafter, his car stopped on the track after having simply died.

Yet he somehow managed to finish in a season-high third place.

When I think of “highlights” for the winningest driver of a given decade, I don’t typically point to races during which their cars die. But Power’s 2019 season has been that level of weird.

I also don’t typically point to races during which they get absolutely schooled and finish 28.4391 second behind the winner. But that is exactly what happened in the race at Road America, and it resulted in Power securing a season-high second place finish. Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi won the race by this margin, a margin of victory that was the largest in nearly 10 years.

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So as far as one highlight to point to in Will Power’s 2019 IndyCar season, it’s probably his pole position for the season opener, as strange as it sounds. At that point, he was leading the championship standings with one point over everybody else in a second place tie with zero, and he extended that lead to two points by leading the race’s first 12 laps. After that, things have been crazy for him.

Of course, there is always the simply fact that he is somehow still in fifth place in the championship standings with five races remaining on the scheduled despite all of his misfortune.