Power trip

I don't know who this man is, there on the TV screen. I don't know this ... this ... maniac, sitting in his car, helmet hair sticking up in crazy Einstein tangles, shaking his gloved fists and screaming, screaming, screaming at the baking sun-seared sky.

Good lord. Now look at him.

Now he's standing up in the car, shaking his fists again, screaming again, looking straight into the camera with a lunatic's eyes. Now here comes his wife, and he's screaming at her (We did it!!), and he's screaming at the 500 Festival queen, for God's sake, and milk is dripping off his chin. And now he's hugging his wife, and here come some more people, and he's grinning and hugging them and, dear heaven, has there ever been a display like this in Victory Lane at Indianapolis? Has there ever been this much pure, unrestrained joy, even when it's the Indianapolis 500 and you've just won it?

And would you ever have thought you'd see it from this guy?

"This guy" being Will Power, his time come 'round at last, and, listen, I don't know this man. I've talked to him half a dozen times over the years, and his public face was always that of a nice, polite, reserved guy from Toowoomba, Australia, a bit wary talking to a reporter he doesn't really know. A bit wary, too, at the inevitable line of questioning.

Which was always about his dominance on the road courses of IndyCar, and how his performance on the ovals never quite matched up. And then, later, when he got to the point where he could pretty much win anywhere -- when Will Power was just so damned good at times it was as if he was driving a different race car on an entirely different level from everyone around him -- it was about why he could win everywhere else in IndyCar except at Indianapolis on the last Sunday in May.

Oh, he'd come close. Finished second behind Juan Pablo Montoya in 2015, when he, Montoya and Scott Dixon waged a stirring Masters of the IndyCar Universe duel across the final laps. And for a fleeting few seconds Sunday, it looked as if he were going to merely come close again after looking for so long like this was going to be his day at last.

He'd been around the front all day, after all, and then he was in front, and the longer it went in the thick heat the more you got a sense that you were looking at your race winner. He was in the right pit window. His stops were flawless. He'd duck in first and come out first after the field reshuffled.

But in the last 20 laps, Oriol Servia, Stefan Wilson and Jack Harvey stayed out, gambling that a couple of late yellows gave them just enough laps to get to the checkers before their tanks ran dry. Servia got swallowed up on the last restart with seven to go, and suddenly Wilson looked like your winner and Power, running behind Wilson and Harvey but the fastest guy out there, looked like he was going to run out of laps before he could catch them both.

And then fate smiled on him. Go figure.

With three laps to run both Wilson and Harvey ran out of gas, ducking into the pits just in front of Power. After that it was just a matter of keeping it between the walls.

And after that ...

The screaming. The fist-shaking. All that joy, unleashed at last.

In those moments, it became obvious that what Power said for public consumption about winning the 500, and what was going on inside him, were vastly different. He would always answer the questions, but as the years ran along it became increasingly clear he'd grown weary of them. And so when he talked about how much he wanted to win Indy, it began to sound almost rote.

Likely that was mere perception on the listener's part. In truth, everyone who knew him, or got him to open up, would tell you he really, really wanted to win the 500. It was the only mountain he hadn't conquered. And of course, by winning it, it would finally put an end to all the questions.

And so maybe that was relief we were seeing from Will Power, there in Victory Lane. Maybe that was it as much as anything.

Nah.

That was just joy. Unbound, set-free-at-last joy.