Forced to wait to start the next stage of his IndyCar career with Andretti Global, Will Power has been crushed by the way his parting with Team Penske played out and the animosity he felt from his former organization through the final four months of last year.
The ramifications might come back to bite Team Penske, which is coming off one of its worst seasons in years. Power rang in 2026 by going for a Jan. 1 midnight run decked in Andretti gear. He was in the shop two days later to meet his new team, sit in the seat of his new car and start working on a campaign he’s determined will make Penske regret writing him off.
“There’s nothing more I want to do this year than beat Penske every single weekend,” Power said. “And I understand why I wasn’t allowed to start at Andretti until now because we’re only two weeks into the year and we are already working very, very hard on everything we need to get to work on.”
Power had driven for Roger Penske since 2009 and set the IndyCar series record for poles (71), built a career that has him ranked fourth on the all-time wins list with 71 victories — including one Indianapolis 500 — and won two IndyCar titles.
But that math couldn’t compete with the clock, and Power, who turns 45 on the same day the IndyCar season opens March 1 in St. Petersburg, Florida, simply doesn’t have much time left in his racing career. It led Team Penske to choose 24-year-old David Malukas as his replacement.
The transition was more than a year in the making, but a lack of transparency forced Power to twist in uncertainty for almost the entire 2025 IndyCar season.
He instead signed with Andretti Global, now owned by TWG Motorsports and Dan Towriss, a group eager to add his veteran leadership in its bid to return the organization to the top of IndyCar.
Spurning a return to Penske did not sit well with the boss, who held Power to a contract that ran through Dec. 31 and essentially parked him from starting with Andretti until the first of this year.
Malukas, meanwhile, was in Penske merchandise and getting a jump on his new job the entire time Power was sidelined.
Towriss in another coup snagged Ron Ruzewski, one of three Team Penske executives fired during an Indianapolis 500 cheating scandal, as its team principal for IndyCar. Ruzewski and Power know Team Penske inside and out and bring priceless knowledge to an Andretti organization that last won the IndyCar title in 2012.
One of Power’s first acts at the start of January was to ask Ruzewski for a team meeting that included teammates Marcus Ericsson and Kyle Kirkwood and the Andretti leadership to discuss priorities and debrief Power’s first session in his new Honda, a test earlier this month in Phoenix.
“Will is one of the nicest, greatest guys in the series and one of the most pure competitors in IndyCar, and I absolutely adore him,” Kirkwood said. “He’s already been great for us in just a few weeks. He works day in and day out to make sure he’s one of the most competitive drivers in the series, and that’s a drive I think we all hope to have.
“He definitely feels like he has something to prove, and combined with Ron, well, there’s no doubt the two of them are going to greatly help improve Andretti’s short oval program.”
Power concurred.
“Already on it,” Power said. “Roger was very shrewd in not letting us get started until the start of the year because he knows how much information we are bringing into Andretti.”
Power has secured a townhome in Indiana to be close to the race team while he keeps his full-time home in North Carolina. He spent an entire day in the Honda simulator earlier this week before heading to Daytona International Speedway for his first time participating in the most prestigious endurance race in North America, the Rolex 24 at Daytona.
Penske rarely allowed Power to compete in events outside of IndyCar but had approved him to race in the Rolex in 2023. The entry fell apart when Power’s wife developed a staph infection that nearly killed her and he had to withdraw from Daytona as he sat by her hospital bedside.
He finally is back in a bucket list event but with mixed emotions. He believes these two weekends at Daytona are cutting into the time he could be working with his new Andretti engineers. And his life has changed completely from where he was three years ago as a veteran Penske driver with a sense of security from the loyalty he had given to that program for so long.
The rest of the IndyCar field is intrigued to see what Power delivers this year at Andretti because they believe he never has been more motivated.
“He’s going to be very fast, very good, especially on road and street courses,” former Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin said. “I know what Will’s like, and he’s very regimented in terms of what he likes and how he likes things and what he can offer to Andretti. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s on the pole at St. Pete.”
It is those assets that Towriss is looking for as he begins his second season as the full owner of Andretti. He was openly disappointed at Penske’s stance in refusing to allow Power to work until the start of January, particularly because Team Penske has been working with Malukas for months.
“He’s coming in with an insane worth ethic,” Towriss said. “He thinks about racing all the time. We want to win, and if you want to just have a job or just work at a race team, then go somewhere else. Come here with us because you want to be part of something and build something special. We know we got that in Will Power.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
