Captain's Corner - Will Power talks Long Beach

This week, Team Penske driver, Will Power, talks about his preparation for the 2017 IndyCar Series season and this weekend’s Long Beach Grand Prix.

Even though our St. Petersburg result wasn’t what we wanted, it was awesome to be a part of the race, which was something I wasn’t able to do in 2016. The difference in how I feel at the beginning of the season this year is night and day from a year ago.

I missed the St. Pete race last year after a crash in practice left me feeling not at my best and missing a race impacts the point standings greatly. For a ton of different reasons I just wasn’t physically ready to compete at a high level at the beginning of last season. That offseason was spent chasing down why I wasn’t feeling a 100-percent. As a result, I wasn’t able to get in the physical training like I had in the past. Being physically fit is critical in this sport. We’re in the car for long periods of time and that time is demanding. It may not seem like it from the outside, but the forces on our bodies are significant.  

That’s old news now, though. This year it’s a completely different story. I was able to go through the whole offseason and get in the physical training I needed to compete. I’ve kind of been viewed as a workout warrior in the past, but my regimen has changed over the years and gotten very targeted. In the end, though, I feel great and ready to attack the season.

It’s pretty amazing how your physical health impacts how you feel overall. As I said, the difference for me is 180 degrees. I didn’t get to feeling myself until the middle portion of the schedule last season and it’s easy to see when that was by looking at the results my team and I were able to get.

I’m definitely excited at the prospects this season and my physical state is a big part of that. Everyone has a couple of off weeks over the course of an IndyCar season for different reasons, but that’s just about the limit. Anything more than that and you’ll really be behind the eight ball. And that is something we’ve seen time and time again. A team gets into a bad place and starts pressuring to change its momentum which leads them to make careless mistakes. We don’t have a long schedule that sometimes can be forgiving. The best way to ensure success is to be ready from the very start. Much beyond that and a hard job gets all that more difficult.

At St. Petersburg, we had a little mechanical problem that didn’t allow us to finish the race. No one is happy about it, but those things happen and you just have to move past it. If that’s the worst thing that happens to the No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet team this year, then it should be a pretty good season.

We head to Long Beach this week for one of the great events on our schedule. It has great history and the fan support is awesome. The race course is challenging and the Southern California weather is normally spectacular. It’s one of the events in which I wasn’t at my best last year, so I’m really looking forward to getting out there and putting together a solid weekend. My teammate Simon Pagenaud won this race last year and another, Helio Castroneves, started from the pole position and finished third. Team Penske cars always perform well in Long Beach and it’s sure to be a competitive race.

-        Will Power