Penske Racing President Tim Cindric and IZOD IndyCar Series driver Will Power participated in a Q&A session following the announcement that Power will race in the IZOD IndyCar Series in 2010 for Penske Racing's No. 12 Verizon Wireless Dallara/Honda. Below are select quotes from their interview. The complete transcript and audio MP3 file are posted at www.indycar.com/media.
Tim Cindric
· President of Penske Racing, which fields the IZOD IndyCar Series entries of Helio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe under the Team Penske banner and Will Power under the Penske Racing banner.
· Since Cindric joined Team Penske in 1999, it has scored three open‑wheel titles, including the 2006 IndyCar series title with Sam Hornish Jr., and five Indianapolis 500 race wins including in 2009 with Helio Castroneves.
Will Power
· 28-year-old Australian who has competed in the IZOD IndyCar Series for the last two seasons, including six events with Penske Racing in 2009.
· Will drive the No. 12 Verizon Wireless entry in the IZOD IndyCar Series full-time in 2010.
· Won his first IZOD IndyCar Series race at Edmonton and recorded four top-five and six top-10 finishes in his six starts in 2009. Won pole positions at Long Beach and Edmonton.
· Suffered season-ending back injury in practice accident at Infineon Raceway.
Q. What does Will 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 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. 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, 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. 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. Beyond getting yourself fully healthy again, do you see any areas of improvement that you can work on to kind of bring yourself up to the level of a title contender? And by areas I mean getting better on specific tracks, car setups, things of that nature? What is your perspective on that?
WILL POWER: I believe you have to learn every year. Every year you have to come away with a plan for the next year at places where you're going to be better. I've always done that throughout my career. I already have in my head where I'm going to improve on the tracks that I raced at this year. So that's just a constant process with me. I'm always searching. I think to be successful in this business you have to be because it's always a development going on. It's always moving forward. So that's my normal plan of attack.
