Racer - INDYCAR 2016

2014 IndyCar champ Will Power has many street-course wins on his résumé, including a hard-fought victory at the last brand-new downtown street track, in Baltimore in 2011 (RIGHT). 2016 season preview

2.25-mile street trACK
SOUTH BOSTON WATERFRONT, mASS.
BOSTON GRAND PRIX
SEPT. 4

WILL
POWER
When you visit a new street
course for the first time, there’s
a process you go through to
learn the track as quickly as possible.

You do the track walk when you first arrive so you’ve got it all in your head when you go out for first practice, but it’s always different when you’re actually in the racecar. There’s only so much you can learn from walking it. You’re really just learning where everything is. Then it’s a matter of getting out there in the car and getting those patterns down.

Also, a street course evolves a lot over a weekend because of the rubber going down. It starts out very slippery, but gets better and better, so the lap times come down dramatically.

One of the differences between a street course and a road course is that instead of a big run-off area you often just have concrete walls, so you have to be careful in feeling out where the limit is. But it’s usually pretty easy to sense it, and it’s something that you creep up on all through the weekend.

And, obviously you’re always looking at your teammates’ data, too. All that stuff comes into play as you learn the track and it eventually culminates in lap times that are tenths apart, instead of seconds apart. You start out by taking big chunks, and then it’s all about the little details.

Even though you have a pretty good handle on the place by the time the race starts, there’s still a lot that you can only pick up from the race itself. You finish it and think, “Oh, I learned this, this and this.” In contrast, when you go to a more established street course, such as St. Pete or Long Beach, you feel you know it so well. I love learning a new street course. Absolutely love it. It’s just so much fun.