The extracts below detail Power’s brilliant performance at Sonoma Raceway - the day after his hotel was rocked by an earthquake - and explain how his racing career was forged during his childhood in Toowoomba, Queensland.

Chapter 1: Facing the demons

It’s Will Power’s final pre-race TV interview at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, before embarking on the last stage of his quest for the 2014 Verizon IndyCar Series championship. With his facial lines and features accentuated in the shadows cast by a setting SoCal sun, Power looks more weary than tense, but his words and manner betray him.

The Australian drawl sounds languid enough to convince the unaware that he’s perhaps about to get in his street car and drive to a store, but his replies start early – unusual for a guy who likes to measure all angles of an interviewer’s questions before opening his mouth – and they’re also very guarded. The TV guy’s smart, realizes he’s not going to get any deep insights at this juncture, detects the “Enough already” vibe from the title favorite, and closes out.

A vague flicker of a smile for the cameras from the driver as the interview ends – actually, it’s more a “thanks for taking the hint, pal” – then visible relief in Will’s body language as he turns to the people assembled around the back of his racecar. Right now, just a few moments before he pulls on his balaclava and crash helmet, they’re the only people he wants to speak to and listen to, the only ones who matter. There’s his wife, Liz; his race engineer, Dave Faustino; his strategist, overseer and Team Penske president, Tim Cindric; and his crew, headed by chief mechanic Matt Jonsson.

If there are any people with as much riding on this result as Power, they’re within this tight-knit group. All seem in good spirits, projecting confidence, trying to keep their driver loose and relaxed.

Actually, there are a few others with just as much vested in the quest: both sides of the family, naturally, countless folk from principal sponsor Verizon, and several people within the Penske organization  – not least Roger Penske, The Captain, himself. However, there’s an odd twist here. While Roger Penske’s in the happy position of knowing he’s pretty much guaranteed one of his drivers will win the championship tonight, he’s calling for the other one, Helio Castroneves. Not cheering, note, but calling, as in “calling race strategy”. Now, RP’s squad is a famed and consummate example of the “no-‘I’-in-‘team’” cliché, but from Power’s perspective that other cliché – if one wins, we all win – can’t even be contemplated. For one thing, it goes against instinct for a racecar driver to think that way; your teammate is one of your principal rivals. Secondly, Will’s witnessed the good-natured competition between his own man, Cindric, and Penske when they’re battling strategically from the pit wall. Will knows what a buzz his legendary boss will get if Castroneves, in his fifteenth season at the team, finally wins his first IndyCar championship. Not surprisingly, Castroneves’ three Indianapolis 500 wins for Team Penske have earned him a special place in Roger’s heart.

But it’s his performance through 2014 that has earned Castroneves another dose of respect from Power. For much of his IndyCar career, Castroneves gave the impression that despite an abundance of natural talent and car control, he was both lacking technical savvy and also consistency, and so his form each year was patchy. Come the end of any given season, it was all too easy to see how/where/why his title hopes had disappeared. However, since Power’s arrival at Penske as a part-timer in 2009, the veteran has gradually upped his technical game, and Jonathan Diuguid, Helio’s race engineer since 2013, has taken that process even further. Now, at the age of thirty-nine, Castroneves is expected to be a threat on any type of racetrack on the IndyCar calendar – street course, natural road course, short oval and superspeedway. As a genuinely impressed Power puts it, “Helio is faster than ever,” and he’s aware this is both a blessing and a curse. The yin is that Castroneves’ feedback is now a hell of a lot more useful to both Will and Team Penske as a whole; the yang for Will is that now he has a tougher rival – a major championship threat, and one who’s blessed with the exact same resources and, theoretically, the exact same car.

Still, no gain without pain: his teammate’s renewed strength is something Power has learned to live with throughout this season. Overall, he regards it as a positive, acknowledging that his own competitive desire feeds off a regularly refueled rivalry – a process that isn’t discouraged at Team Penske. Ol’ Roger is traditionally swift to prevent intra-team struggles getting out of control and spilling into the public domain, but he’s also an ex-racing driver who likes to see his guys push one another. And, anyway, The Captain is well aware that he can’t change nature: a topline racer is one of an ultra-competitive breed, desperate to prove who’s top dog in any and every situation. Housing at least two of them may have its occasional downside but, overall, should benefit the team.

Should. In the case of these two, Team Penske’s yet to feel that benefit in championship terms. Despite all the race wins accrued in five full seasons together, Power and Castroneves (who’s been with the team since 2000) have finished runner-up in the IndyCar points table three times each, and between them have claimed this first-of-the-losers slot for the past four years. Thus 2014 is regarded both internally and externally as a welcome change. The IndyCar Series itself is guaranteed a first-time champ, and Roger Penske is all but guaranteed his first IndyCar champion in eight years. Schmidt Peterson Motorsports’ Simon Pagenaud has impressed many by clinging to an outside chance of taking the honors in this final round, but it would require a highly unlikely string of events to occur – something akin to both Penske drivers being abducted by aliens in the early laps this evening.

Mind you, that concept is only slightly weirder than what’s actually happened to Power recently. This race at Fontana is the climax of a crazy fourteen days for him – a typical sample of the 2014 season and, arguably, Will’s career as a whole.

Two weeks ago, around the flat one-mile oval in Milwaukee for the sixteenth of the season’s eighteen rounds, Power’s searing run to pole position proved the cornerstone for arguably the most dominant drive by any IndyCar driver all year. On race day, the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske entry was at the front for 229 of the 250 laps of America’s oldest track. Almost as significantly, Power’s nearest opponent that weekend wasn’t Castroneves but the other

Penske machine of former Indy car champion Juan Pablo Montoya, who thereby statistically kept himself in the title hunt. Realistically, the Colombian’s chances were still tenuous, but at least that would mentally free him to just go for it over the final two races, unhindered by thoughts of the championship. If it happened, it happened; if not, no worries, because no one was expecting it. Castroneves, by contrast, left Milwaukee still very much in the running for that first elusive crown, yet had just suffered a psychological blow. That weekend he was relatively nowhere, lapped by his teammates on his way to a dismal eleventh-place finish.

Power was by no means home and dry, though, and felt awkward the following week when legendary Indy car journalist and broadcaster Robin Miller wrote a story on RACER.com pointing out that Will should have been heading to the penultimate race in Sonoma, California, with the title all but sewn up. Instead, IndyCar’s controversial preseason decision to give out double points for the three 500-mile races – Indianapolis, Pocono and the finale in Fontana  – had artificially kept Castroneves in the title hunt. Under the traditional points system, wrote Miller, Power would have a 75-point buffer between himself and his teammate, despite Castroneves’ runner-up places at both Indianapolis and Pocono, where Power had finished a relatively disastrous ninth and tenth respectively. The reality, by contrast, was that the gap was 39 points … and there were 158 left on the table.

IndyCar’s new points system, then, had done its job by almost guaranteeing the championship would remain open until the final checkered flag. Some tried to justify this random doubling of the value of three races, but most thought it ridiculous that seventh place at, say, Pocono could earn a driver as many points as winning at Long Beach or Mid-Ohio.

“It’s the same for everybody – nothing we can do except keep focused and earn as many points as possible,” Power told Miller. But that was Will deliberately sounding reasoned while on the record. Away from the Dictaphones and video cameras, he’d been aggravated by this misguided notion ever since IndyCar had announced it less than two weeks before the first round. And now that rule was biting him on the ass.

At least the Milwaukee win had dampened his agitation – “Our path is easier now, but it’s by no means easy” – and Will went into Sonoma as confident as a glass-half-empty guy can be. A lateseason breakthrough in car setup had renewed the confidence of both he and Faustino that the perplexing technical misstep that dogged the No. 12 car for much of the year was now behind them. Sonoma Raceway, the beautiful, undulating road course in California’s Napa Valley, is a track with which Power has a love– hate relationship. It’s where, in 2009, he suffered his biggest career setback – namely, a broken back – but also a venue at which he’d since delivered three wins and three pole positions in four years. And in 2014, he was on his usual form around the 12-turn, 2.52-mile layout, grabbing pole by over three-tenths of a second. On a 77-second lap that margin sounds minimal, but it was as commanding an edge as it’s possible to achieve in modern-era Indy car racing. And on a circuit where it’s notoriously difficult to pass, no less important was the fact that Castroneves was down in sixth after blowing his last qualifying run. The other title contender, Pagenaud, appeared out of the equation, braking issues confining the Schmidt Peterson Motorsports driver to fifteenth on the grid.

Power, who’d confessed he’d stopped sleeping well after taking pole at Milwaukee, went to bed that night in Sonoma with the same feeling as seven days earlier – first job done but primary job tomorrow. However he was in for the rudest of rude awakenings. A 6.0 magnitude earthquake shook the foundations of his hotel at 3.20 a.m., sending picture frames, bottles and bathroom mirrors crashing to the floor and triggering the hotel staff to evacuate the building. It wasn’t the end of the world, as Power had assumed when he was first rattled to his senses, but it was the end of the night’s rest for him.

As a man who says he can’t function without a good night’s sleep, Will functioned just fine for the first twenty-nine laps of the race and continued his domination of the weekend. However two back-to-back full-course caution periods bunched the field together and triggered a round of pit stops, and it was at this point, when every tenth of a second was vital, that Chip Ganassi Racing’s pit crew vaulted reigning champion Scott Dixon out of the pits ahead of Power. They re-emerged in seventh and eighth, behind only those who’d gone off-strategy and elected not to stop. Now Will had a fight on his hands for the first time all day.

And he blew it. Coming down to the hairpin Turn 7 following the restart, Power hugged the inside line and braked early to avoid running into Dixon. That allowed two other cars on his outside to draw level and crowd the No. 12, forcing it to remain on the inside at corner exit to avoid losing his front wing on another car. Problem was, that was the unused part of the track, and was covered in rubber “marbles” from the tires of passing racecars, as well as the coating of sand and dust inherent with Sonoma Raceway. Will got on the gas a fraction too hard and too soon for his fresh but cold tires to handle.

“It was like I was on ice,” he said afterward. “The back came around so suddenly, considering how slow we go through there [approximately 35 mph], at first I thought someone must have hit me. And then, once the car had let go, I just had to gas it, make sure I didn’t stall. If I’d stalled, we might have gone a lap down while the Safety Team got me restarted.”

A sequence of spectacular smoky pirouettes got the car pointing the right way, so all was not lost. All was not good, either. Power was now at the back of the pack, with an ill-handling car thanks to the violent heat cycle the rear tires had been put through in just a few abrasive seconds. Saving the engine had killed the Firestones and for the remainder of the stint, he was just trying to control the violently wayward rear end of the car while not losing touch with the back of the pack.

“Man, that was hard,” said Power, eyes widening at the recollection. “I had no rear grip at all. I was just on tip-toes through the fast sections and I did almost lose it at one point where the car went light over a crest. All I could do was maintain the gap to whoever was in front.”

One of those in front and, amazingly, not too far in front, was Castroneves. He’d been caught up in a Lap 1 collision not of his making, had made an extra pit stop for repairs and was now running eighteenth, just two cars ahead of his teammate. Bearing in mind Montoya had only just reached the top ten  – a qualifying indiscretion had consigned him to near the back of the grid – Penske’s day was now looking pretty disastrous. But Power could still make progress. A strong out-lap on cold tires after his second pit stop put him ahead of Castroneves and as others’ pit strategies played out, he was into the top dozen when he muscled past James Hinchcliffe of Andretti Autosport in the closing stages.

Boldly diving down the inside of Justin Wilson’s Dale Coyne Racing machine at the final turn of the final lap, Power attempted to grab ninth, but an out-of-fuel car just before the start-finish line had brought out yellow flags, which mean proceed with caution and hold station. While the No. 12 did cross the line ahead of Wilson, Power was docked one place in the final results.

So tenth place on a day when his championship rival had trailed home only eighteenth. It should have been way, way better for Power but it could have been much, much worse. He didn’t really know how to handle the conflicting emotions after the race – mad at himself for the mistake and for leaving the championship door ajar for Castroneves, but trying to see the positive side of extending his points lead to 51.

And then the bullshit started. A simple error, the kind every racer makes a couple of times each season, was apparently the beginning of the end of Power’s title campaign, if you believed what you read on fan forums immediately post-race. And the “expert” media chimed in, too. Power threw the race away, now he’s going to do the same with the championship. He’s cracking under pressure. He’s a choker.

He’s going to do what he did three times before. That had always been a spectacularly inaccurate generalization, but it was a neat sound bite for the anti-Power members of the press whose prejudices emanated from two distinct and unreasonable schools of thought. There were those who still missed the public persona and charming geniality of Dario Franchitti, Power’s former nemesis, and there were those who automatically gave Castroneves a sympathy vote because “at his age, how many more chances is he going to get?”.

Seriously.

In the aftermath, Power wisely kept away from the gossip, and the back and forth between the pro- and anti-groups of IndyCar fans and media. It would have served no purpose to get involved because 1) he didn’t want to get riled, 2) he’d never convince the haters, and 3) he couldn’t go back and alter the facts. What was done was done.

One of Power’s most important decisions, made in the second half of the 2013 season and carried into 2014, was that he would no longer dwell on the bad days, be they the result of mechanical issues, simple bad luck or genuine mistakes. As long as he and all those around him learned from any blunders, there was no need for a period of penance. Mere days after a significant error, and mere days before the most significant race of his life, his new policy would serve him well.

Further helping Power to focus on what was to come rather than what had just gone was the fact that his commitments in the days running up to the Fontana showdown didn’t involve much specialist media. Appearances for sponsors and interviews with general news media outlets don’t tend to require a great deal of deep thought – “Is your name really Will Power?” and “How much would it mean to you to win the title this weekend?” That kind of thing. So when Power and Castroneves did radio and TV appearances – some apart, some together – Power came across well because he was reasonably relaxed, subconsciously welcoming the distraction from the momentous weekend ahead.

This mild reverie was interrupted by a five-hour-plus test (practice session) at Auto Club Speedway on the Wednesday but after that even Penske’s traditional Thursday-night dinner with the press went smoothly. California remains one of US open-wheel racing’s stronger states, and the local journalists are knowledgeable but also old-school polite – they let the driver do the talking. Power responded affably.

Actually, there was one crack in Power’s 2014 focus forward façade. On the Tuesday evening, after describing the Sonoma race, he couldn’t help asking what the points situation would be now if he hadn’t spun and had settled for a relatively easy second place behind Dixon. Without waiting for the reply, he turned away and said, “Actually, don’t tell me; can’t think that way. We just know we’ve got to finish in the top six at Fontana if Helio wins … and we’ve got to go in assuming he’s going to win and get all the bonus points (one for pole, one for leading a lap and two for leading most laps). He can probably do that.”

That was an interesting blend of new-and-old-school Power – looking ahead and expecting the worst. As things transpired, he was smart to think that way. Power and Castroneves dominated morning practice on Friday at the two-mile oval, setting 221 mph lap averages, almost 2 mph clear of their nearest pursuer. But come the qualifying session, in ambient temperatures of 100  degrees Fahrenheit, something went majorly awry for the No. 12. On his first flying lap, Power found himself walking the car up the track, having to back out of the throttle, drift it and catch it to avoid hitting the wall. The lost momentum not only killed that lap, it severely injured his second, too, and so his two-lap average was a disastrous 214 mph, relegating him to the back row of the grid.

And like Power had gloomily predicted, Castroneves had earned pole position and an extra point.

Inevitably, this triggered another round of media speculation that with only himself to beat, Power was going to do exactly that. Here was a man who needed to conquer his demons, they said, and instead he was running to meet and greet them. Lost in the negativity were two crucial facts – 1) Power was the defending race winner here at Auto Club Speedway, and 2) he kept his head together in the aftermath of that horrible qualifying run and finished Friday evening’s practice session third fastest. That mental adjustment had come easy because he knew exactly what had gone wrong in the afternoon. Just a couple of years earlier, his car’s wayward behavior on an oval might have drained Power’s confidence, dulled his competitive edge, and persuaded him that staying well within his comfort zone was the right policy going forward. But 2014-spec Power had looked confident again by evening practice.

Not easing anyone’s peace of mind, though, was the serious accident that occurred that evening between Ganassi’s American driver Charlie Kimball and the Russian Mikhail Aleshin of Schmidt Peterson Motorsports. Aleshin’s initial mistake was minor but at lap speeds averaging 215 mph, everything becomes exaggerated. What should have just been a rapid, hard but ultimately harmless thump into the Turn 4 wall became something more serious when, in its swift ride up the banked track, the SPM car launched off Kimball’s machine and onto the wall, tearing up the catch-fencing fixed on top as it dissipated its energy. Kimball had the Dallara’s cockpit protection to thank for escaping without injury, but Aleshin was not so lucky and needed to be flown to hospital where he was diagnosed with a concussion, broken ribs, internal chest injuries and a broken collarbone. Scratch one entry from the MAVTV 500.

Aleshin’s absence would barely make Power’s job any simpler. He still had twenty cars trying to beat him and, by qualifying at the back, he’d given his toughest rivals a head start. On his side was the fact this was a 500-mile race on a wide oval – plenty of time and space to get to the front, where he belonged. Working against him would be the fact that any dramas while the cars were running close together in the race’s early stages would happen ahead of him, not behind, and as proven by the Aleshin/Kimball clash, at these unrelentingly high speeds, one driver’s misjudgment can easily and rapidly affect others. Having steered his way through the debris of the accident, Power had received Fate’s memo.

Saturday was a waste of time with nothing happening on track. IndyCar had scheduled the race in the height of the Southern California summer but had reasoned that was okay for an evening event, because no one was going to be sitting in the bleachers for hours getting heat stroke. For the drivers’ sakes, the race wouldn’t get the green flag until the sun had finally sunk behind the nearby mountains. Two years ago at this venue, they’d been driving blind down the back straight at 220 mph in the early stages of the race and it had been a miracle no accidents had occurred.

Power would have gladly settled for 500 miles this Saturday afternoon, merciless sun notwithstanding; it beat hanging around. Penske’s PR gurus had kept the drivers’ media and sponsor commitments to a minimum today, but that just meant more time to keep busy doing nothing. Power spent those hours trying to think only of the race rather than its significance, but that was an impossible task: how could he avoid wondering what it would feel like twentyfour hours from now if his dream were to come true? Three times in recent years he’d had that dream put on hold and thus spent the winter brooding over a missed opportunity and all those “If only …”moments from the season past. He couldn’t stand all that again.

Because those previous experiences of going into the season finale as a championship contender had ended only in excruciating disappointment, they were of no use to Power through this endless afternoon. He wanted – needed – a different outcome and so felt his input and output during this prologue had to be different. Having his mother there, over from Australia, was a welcome distraction.

This was the first time in his entire racing career that Marg would see her son compete. (She’d also been at Sonoma the previous week, but had felt unwell after her fifteen-hour flight and so hadn’t gone to the track.) A naturally placid soul, Marg fitted in easily with the pre-race atmosphere of carefully suppressed anticipation created by Liz and her mother, Kathy, who are usually both emotional people, but who are also race veterans and know when to keep the atmosphere merely lukewarm.

And so now Power treads a fine line. He tries to resist the adrenaline surge because he doesn’t want to become agitated but, equally, he can’t let his mind slip into an artificially laid-back mode. In the past, that has led to overt caution and he can’t afford that now.

Yeah, now that’s a positive way to look at his lowly grid position: it removes some variables, makes his task and chosen methodology this evening more clear-cut. No guesswork about what pace to run, no dilemmas over how hard to fight. Instead, Power can focus on mounting a careful, clinical charge from the back of the grid knowing he has to finish in the top six if Castroneves wins. Reassuringly too, he knows he has the car to do it. The conditions from the previous evening’s practice session have given everyone a good idea of how their car will behave once the sun goes down, and while the Ganassi team looked strong, that’s as likely to hurt Castroneves as Power. Given the points situation, if Castroneves finishes only, say, third and also claims the remaining bonus points, Power can still clinch the title with eighteenth.

Now the time has come. Fist-bumps with crew members, clumsy handshakes and semi-embraces with Cindric and Faustino, a last kiss and private exchange of words with Liz. Then there’s the routine of slipping the earplugs in, pulling the balaclava down, sliding the helmet on, fastening the chin strap, making tiny adjustments for comfort, slithering into the cockpit, the team attaching his steering wheel, then fussing around and clipping the cockpit-surround in place. The babble of voices on pit road and the announcer aren’t completely muted but the volume’s way down now, thanks to the insulation provided by all his head gear. Will does radio checks with his spotter, CR Crews, way up on top of Auto Club Speedway’s hospitality suites, and with Cindric, down at pit exit. Both are vital as they’ll provide extra sets of eyes and ears. They come through loud and clear, no problem.

As the guest starter bellows the command  – “Drivers, start your engines!” – all the pre-race conjecture melts into irrelevancy. For Will Power, it’s now all about what he does with his DallaraChevrolet DW12 Indy car for the next couple of hours. He knows his own capabilities  – he won this race last year. He knows his car’s capabilities – it’s been fast all weekend. Contrary to what the media wrote, the demons Power needs to conquer tonight aren’t personal. They’re the thousand tiny things that could go against him: Fontana’s sandy, abrasive coating of dust that choked several engines the previous two years; a cross-threaded wheel nut or faulty refueling equipment causing a disastrously long pit stop; a badly timed caution period. Oh, and then there are also the crazies in the cockpits of twenty other cars just like his …

As the engines ahead of him on the pre-grid crescendo, Power ups the revs on the Chevy 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6, clicks the clutch paddle on the left side of the steering wheel, clicks the gearshift paddle on the right, gently releases his hold on the clutch, and smoothly heads off to face all those demons.

Chapter 2: Roots

Weather apart, that hot summer night in Fontana, California, was a lifetime and 7000 miles away from Will’s roots in Toowoomba, Australia. Since Will Power rose to prominence in Indy car racing and began to refer to his origins, it’s become common for people to assume from its name that Toowoomba is a tiny village out in the bush in the middle of nowhere. In fact, it’s a city whose population is well into six figures, and it’s only 80 miles west of Brisbane. Admittedly, a road trip between the two cities will reveal a whole lot of not much, but it’s certainly not Hicksville Central. In fact, Toowoomba Pasta has even earned a place on the Australia-themed Outback Steakhouse restaurant chain in America …

Anyway, it was in Queensland’s sixth-largest city that Robert and Margrett Power (hereafter known as ‘Bob’ and ‘Marg’) raised four sons  – Kenneth, Nicholas, William, and Damien, in datedescending order. Now, destiny, in the pre-ordained sense of the word, is like astrology – utter nonsense devised to make supposedly learned people look wise after an event. Thus when

Bob and Marg named their third son William Stephen Power after his great grandfather, it was a tribute to a relative, and not intended to decide the course of the child’s life. The fact that the original William Stephen Power was hooked on mechanical thrill-seeking and set a motorcycle speed record from Toowoomba to Brisbane in 1915 is pure coincidence; WS Power Jr’s career could have been in banking, politics, cookery  … or (more likely) canvas, just like Bob, who loved racing but was too smart to try and turn it into an income-making career.

But that link between the family’s past and present racing stars is a neat one, whatever Marg thinks.

“I always used to call him William, because I was determined he wasn’t going to be known as ‘Will Power’,” she says. “I mean, who’d ever take that seriously? But eventually I gave up correcting people  –  ‘It’s William!’  – and it changed to Will. And I’ll have to admit, he’s made it work for him.”

She smiles as she recalls the 2014 IndyCar Series champion was “a lovely baby.”

“Being my third, I had practice from Kenneth and Nicholas before him, and they would cry and fuss quite a bit in the night. But with William, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Whenever I used to hear him stir, I’d go over to his crib and check on him, and he’d be lying on his back, quite happy. He’d just stare up at me, smiling. He was very, very content. And then as he grew up, I’d say he was a very quiet boy, probably because his older brother Nick  –  just two years apart  – was the complete opposite, very talkative. In Will’s case, I’d always have to look around to see if he was even there. Those two were just close enough in age that Will tried to do everything Nick was doing, so maybe that was where his competitive streak came from.

“Ken was a fair bit older than the others, four years older than Nick, but all of them were good at playing together, messing around outside in the sand pit and playing with their toy cars and so on. On a nice summer’s day, I could have left them out in the yard for hours on end (I didn’t, of course!) and they wouldn’t get themselves into trouble. In fact, at the end of a day, they’d still be doing the same things they were doing at the start of the day – again, very content, and also content in each other’s company.

“I don’t recall much fighting. Nick, in particular, was always full of energy and seemed to be able to spend all day pushing Will around doing laps of the yard in his little car. Will took full advantage of that, and was perfectly happy driving that car hour after hour.”

It was these same two, Nick and Will, who went with their father most often to watch him race in Australian Formula 2. Looking back some three decades later, Bob believes it was inevitable that eventually he’d end up buying them go-karts.

“Kids are very impressionable at that age,” he says, “and when I’d be going on long road trips down south, even as far down as Tasmania, they’d see me working on the car at home, both before and after a race, and they showed an interest. Then when the races were in Queensland, like at Surfers Paradise or Lakeside, they’d actually come with me and watch me race.

“It’s not something you plan,” continues Bob, who scored several podium (top-three) finishes in Australian F2 in the mid- 1980s, falling frustratingly short of winning a race. “But yeah, I was pleased to see them taking an interest and it didn’t surprise me at all. My father wasn’t a racer, he was just a serious fan, and when I was young, he used to take us kids to a lot of races, which is how I got into it enough to want to compete myself. I think interest in certain sports gets passed down the generations quite easily.”

And Bob was only too pleased to nurture this interest, as Marg explains: “In our home, the garage below quickly became packed with racing cars, go-karts and racing parts for every conceivable car in the racing genre. The whole thing took on its own momentum.

“Let me tell you, racing isn’t the career I’d have ever chosen for Will, and I’ll never be comfortable with it. I come from a family of teachers and I trained as a nurse – so the idea of my sons and Bob doing something dangerous just made me shudder. You see, I knew nothing about racing before I met Bob, and then one of our first dates was going to the Toowoomba Demolition Derby at the showground, so you can imagine why I didn’t think much of racing! But even now I’ve learned about real racing, I still get very anxious. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that Will is satisfied and has done well, but I can’t say I’m happy about what he does for a living. I can’t rest easy.

“You know, I don’t suppose Will has told you that he’s really quite musical  – all of my kids are  – and he played the trumpet, really quite well. I can still see him and this other lad performing a duet in a school concert, and I was so proud. I had dreams, but as a family, we had motor racing …”

As a school pupil, Will found little to spark his interest, but he was into English, and particularly art – so much so that he took extra lessons outside of school.

“Yes, that was a family thing, passed down the generations,” says Marg, “so I took Will to see my old art teacher, and she was really impressed, particularly with his portraits. He used to work really hard at art because it interested him, and he kept it up for a long time. But the other things he was supposed to focus on at school, well, typical of kids that age, if he didn’t care he didn’t really put the effort in. Then from the age of twelve he started becoming a bit of a rebel and getting into trouble at school, so we sent him to a boarding school.”

“What were they thinking?!” exclaims Will. “Boarding school was never going to help me behave better! The thing that pissed me off was that Nick and I had started racing karts from seven or eight years old and I was beginning to get really good for my age group by the time I was sent away. We weren’t taking it that seriously yet – we weren’t focused on it – but being forced to stop racing was frustrating. And it didn’t improve my education at all – I was still a bad kid.

“The month I turned fifteen, I had a massive fight with my dad, and he said, ‘Screw this, you might as well just come and work for me and do an apprenticeship.’

“I don’t know if that was so he could keep a closer eye on me or he needed an extra pair of hands at work, or because he just didn’t want to see me wasting my life and not getting any better at school.

“So I worked for his wholesale confectionery place first, taking orders, stacking shelves, driving forklift trucks. I was crazy on those things. I could unload one of the big freight trucks so fast, and the floor of the warehouse was pretty grippy so I’d deliberately corner really hard and get it up on two wheels. Great fun.

“But I guess Dad figured that wasn’t really the point, and he transferred me to his canvas shop. I’d make tents, car covers, awnings, canopies – always something different, so it was actually quite interesting. We were custom builders so each thing was tailored to fit a customer’s requirements. If someone came in and said they wanted a cover for a particular car, maybe a rare classic, you’d have to go and measure all the different dimensions for this tonneau cover so it was a good fit, and I became pretty handy at then making it, and making it fast.”

“He did,” agrees Marg, “and I think he took pride in his work because it was a form of art. I also wonder if it sharpened his hand–eye coordination. It definitely became a competitive thing, too, because he wanted to be the fastest at doing the job properly. So I think his father was quite encouraged, too, because until Will showed some real talent at racing, Bob wanted Nick and Will to one day run that company, and that made sense because I think they would have run it well. They’re both self-motivated and conscientious, and they both take responsibilities seriously. Will never does anything with less than 100 per cent commitment.”

But it was this same outlook that turned a hobby into something a bit more serious for Will, once he became addicted to the adrenaline kick of racing. At sixteen he started competing in the junior class of dirt-track cars, which were beefed-up sedans.

“It was kind of like rallycross, I suppose,” says Will. “Places like Toowoomba, Warwick, Ipswich, Millmerran and Stanthorpe had these tracks on their outskirts. They were between 0.8 and 1.2 kilometers [half-mile to three-quarter-mile] and were mainly dirt, but there was a bit of asphalt, too. Carnell Raceway in Stanthorpe, Queensland, was like that  – 

.

“In the junior category most people, including me, were using an old Datsun 1200 coupe. You weren’t allowed to lock the diff, and you had to take it through tech inspection beforehand, but apart from that it was pretty casual. It was true grassroots racing in that we took the racing seriously but nothing else. Real fun times.”

“That’s about right,” says Trevor Owen, who’d been Bob’s chief (only!) mechanic for his F2 and F3 cars, and who started running the dirt cars for Will. “I remember it as bush, flies, hamburgers and great racing.”

Will’s debut in the junior category was inauspicious – something that seems to unite a great many racers who go on to become high achievers. Having inadvertently crushed an exhaust pipe while taking the Datsun off the trailer, the engine was choked up and its driver found himself severely lacking in power.

“He was dog slow,” says Bob bluntly, “and I remember thinking, ‘Shit, he’s got a long way to go.’ We had no idea there was a mechanical problem until after.”

But from this stumbled first step at the big-time in small-time racing, Will went on to become a regular winner.

Owen was deeply impressed with how quickly his new young charge evolved.

“Right away, Will was at the front,” he says. “The race that I remember best was at Millmerran, about 60 miles southwest of Toowoomba. We were in the Production category because it allowed a bit of work on the engine, carburetors, suspension, and so on. But this day they put all the classes together in a 100-lap endurance race – we were up against six- and eight-cylinder cars – and Will just carved his way to the front, and by the end of the race he’d almost lapped the entire field twice! It was one of the most exciting races I’ve ever been involved in and right there I knew he was something special. It was such a dominant win the officials were convinced something was wrong in the lap counting or whatever and they wanted to take a lap off him.

Obviously that would mean he still won, but Will was furious that they’d mess around with the results like that. He was only sixteen or whatever, but he has never put up with anything false or anything where he thinks himself or others have been wronged. He yelled at them, ‘Your problem is you’ve never seen anyone of my caliber!’ and he just turned on his heel and we left.”

Interestingly, Marg recalls her husband used to think Nick was the better driver: “I think maybe it was because Nick had more experience, being two years older. He’d obviously been driving on the road for longer, as well as racing. But his heart wasn’t in it, from what I heard. He just didn’t have the concentration or dedication, whereas Will was very disciplined in improving himself.”

“Yeah, Nick would have been a really good driver,” asserts Bob. “He was a real take-no-prisoners, no-holds-barred kinda racer. Will was always playing catch-up, like he had throughout his life, I suppose. Those two would compete with each other on tricycles, then push-bikes, trail bikes, mini motorbikes, so racing was a big part of their playtime, and because Nick had the size and power advantage, Will had to work hard for any victory.

“But when they were both doing dirt cars, I remember Nick tipped his car over in one race and crashed another time, so eventually we had to pension off his little Datsun. Yup, Nick definitely didn’t leave a circuit with any questions unanswered …”

Owen giggles. “That was Nick’s problem,” he says. “He was fast, but he was real tough on equipment to get that speed. He was driving very much on instinct, flat-out all the way, whereas Will was trying to improve all the time  – very thoughtful about the mechanical side of things, but blindingly fast.

“The other car that Will raced at that time was a Holden VH Commodore, which had a 202 cubic inch 6-cylinder engine, and we’d added an aluminum head and triple carburetors. He and Bob shared that in sports sedan racing, and I’d say that again everyone got to see that this kid was a cut above the rest. He was very fast and very aggressive, and I think Will and Bob won just about every race they entered in that car.

“Will wasn’t perfect though. One time I could see we had a problem with second gear and didn’t have time to fix it before the race, so I told him, ‘Okay, start off in first, go straight to third and just spend the whole race in third and fourth. The engine’s got a load of torque so you’ll be fine.’

“So off he goes at the start: first, second … and sure enough the lever jams in there and he has to come back to the pits. I’m saying, ‘What did I tell you?! First, third, fourth is all you’ve got.’ He says, ‘Yes, yes, sorry, sorry.’ He was kicking himself, while I’m crawling under the car and trying to free up this lever so he’s got more than just second gear. It felt like it was taking forever. Finally I free it, and off Will goes … and he still wins the race!”

These early days in sedans provided Will with valuable experience of competition, car control and mechanical knowledge (more of this in the next chapter), but tin-tops weren’t what he’d had his heart set on for over a decade.

“Nah, it was all about Formula 1 before I was ten, and then when Indy cars came to Surfers Paradise, I got hooked on them too,” says Will. “Powerful engines, superfast, and some of the best racing, too, on a wide variety of circuits. That was true of F1 as well, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Plus I suppose with Dad doing Formula 2, I was used to that style of car being my definition of a racecar. Fat slick tires, exposed cockpit, bodywork where everything looked like it served a purpose  – nothing was put there for style. Well, F1 and Indy car were the ultimate for that. And the drivers were dudes, too. You had Senna, Prost, Piquet, and Mansell in F1, and the Andrettis, Al Unser Jr, Fittipaldi, and Rick Mears in Indy cars. Classic times for both series.

“The thing I really loved was when they showed onboard footage  –  Indy car showed it more often than F1, from what I remember – and it was addictive. The acceleration, the wrestling with the steering, the car control, the big front tires out in front, the ridiculous late-braking they could do … magic.

“Anyway, Dad had always been trying to get my brother Nick to come and drive his Formula Ford, and Nick was just not that interested by then. He was digging the social scene and doing breakdancing competitions and stuff, so I think Dad gave up on that idea. Then one day, after I’d been doing well in the Datsun and the Commodore, Dad asked if I wanted to have a test in the Formula Ford. Well, I don’t think I could have said ‘Yes’ any quicker. Shit yeah, I wanted a go. And it was a pivotal moment, because it was absolutely as cool as I’d expected a single-seater racecar to be, and actually during that first test, I decided I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.”

The Sheer Force of Will Power by Will Power, David Malsher, Harper Collins, $39.99