There’s not much a driver can do when the racing gods decide it’s not your time to take the sport’s greatest spoils.
Penske’s Will Power was gracious in defeat on Sunday at Nashville Superspeedway when a fluke occurrence—the main safety belts that lock his waist into the car became disconnected—required a pit stop just minutes into the 206-lap race to have the problem rectified.
The ace No. 12 Chevy crew led by championship-winning crew chief Trevor Lacasse jumped into action and did their best to minimize the time loss, but the belts put up a fight and five laps were surrendered before the issue was resolved. Call it bad luck, or fate, or just something that wasn’t deserved, but the outcome was the same as Power’s main rival Alex Palou encountered no issues and won the championship.
Power would eventually finish eight laps down, which saw his grasp on second place in the drivers’ standings slip to fourth.
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“I was just driving down the front stretch there, and I just felt a pop on the lap belt, and like, man, that’s weird,” Power said. “It felt kind of loose in the car and the seat. So came out of Turn 2, and I was feeling around, and I felt the end of the belt. I’m like, ‘Man, my belt just came off. We’re gonna have to pit.’ Then it took five laps to [fix].”
It came loose once more.
“We learned after because it happened a second time [before] the end of the race,” Power added. “So we learned how to do it quickly. I don’t know what went wrong. We’ll have to send it back to the manufacturer. A very strange failure. Actually, I do wonder if I hit the wall, if it was going to break and I was going to have a real bad situation. But, yep, never had that before.”
Power was among the first drivers to reach victory lane and congratulate his friend Palou.
“I’ve had engine failures, you have gearbox failures; I had a belt failure, so, yeah, disappointing, but big congrats to Alex — a tough guy to beat,” he said. “He obviously did a fantastic job and it’s been fun racing those guys this year, and now we dropped back to fourth because of this day. But, man, happy with the season, the whole team, so we did well, but we want to win that championship, so we’ll come back fighting next year.”