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When it was officially announced that Will Power would not be returning for an eighteenth season at Team Penske, that put several things in motion and the dominos started falling after that. Honestly, there was not a lot of drama by the time the Power announcement was released right at 10:00 am EDT on Tuesday. Most would have been more surprised if he had stayed by that point. The only perceived drama was the wording on the Team Penske release that said “…Will felt like it was time for him to make a change.”

Fans were incensed at the suggestion that the team would word it like that, when we all knew that Power was being kicked to the curb.

As it turns out, the wording was correct. I listened to the last two episodes of the Hinch & Rossi podcast Thursday afternoon while driving back from East Tennessee, and Power was their guest for the last twenty minutes of Wednesday’s episode – and told the whole story of how his contract talks (or lack, thereof) unfolded going back to 2024. I won’t give away what all was said in the podcast, but going into this season, Power was hoping to return to the team he had driven for for the past seventeen seasons. But after what happened in May, he was having doubts. Those doubts were confirmed during the race weekend at Detroit, when Roger Penske sat Power down and said he would allow Power to pursue other options for 2026; in case a deal could not be reached.

Power approached Dan Towriss, now-owner at Andretti Global and told him he wanted to drive for him. Unbeknownst to anyone at that time, Towriss was already working on Colton Herta moving to F2 and being a test driver for his Cadillac F1 team. He told Power he was working on something, and he would get back to him – soon.

By the time Roger Penske got with Power after the Nashville race and offered him a one-year deal to stay with Penske, the deal was done – at least in Power’s mind if not on paper. Towriss had already offered Power a multi-year deal driving a car that finished higher than any Penske car this past season. It turns out, when Power won at Portland, that’s when he decided it was time to leave after that win failed to create any movement on contract talks.

You can hear the enthusiasm in Power’s voice. It sounds like he wants to get started right now, he is so excited. This may be the most blatant example we’ve ever seen of what a change of scenery and a fresh start can do for rejuvenating a driver’s career. Few drivers win over the age of 45. Statistician Russ Thompson tweeted out stats showing that since 1956, only twelve drivers have won races after a driver has turned 45, and only one race this century was won by a driver over 45 – Helio Castroneves in the 2021 Indianapolis 500. And before you say Scott Dixon this year at Mid-Ohio; he turned 45 sixteen days after his win.

When asked what else does he have to prove, Power immediately snapped back that he wanted to prove you still be competitive and drive on a championship level in your forties. What he didn’t say, but you know is a top motivation, is that every bone in his body wants to beat every Team Penske car on the grid to show them what a mistake they made.

In the midst of the Will Power and Colton Herta announcements, another little nugget dropped. Rinus VeeKay notified Dale Coyne Racing (DCR) that he would not return to the team in 2026. While VeeKay has had his career reborn at DCR you wondered if some team would try to pick him up. The problem was, there was no obvious opening for him.

It has been assumed that once Power left Penske, that AJ Foyt Racing’s David Malukas would go into the seat vacated by Power. We’ve been hearing that one for a while. Once VeeKay announced he would not be returning to Coyne, everyone has been assuming that VeeKay would go into the Malukas seat at Foyt. It made sense.

But on Thursday’s podcast, James Hinchcliffe and Alexander Rossi suggested an interesting possibility. Perhaps Team Penske is more interested in VeeKay than they are Malukas. VeeKay did himself proud on the lowest budget team on the grid. He also owns a race win and has demonstrate that he is consistently fast at Indianapolis. He has demonstrated a lot of maturity this season and has a lot of experience in the series. While Malukas has also done well at DCR, Foyt and Meyer Shank Racing; he may still need a little more seasoning before making that jump to Team Penske.

I won’t be surprised if Malukas is still the one that is hired for the newly vacated seat at Penske, but the more that Hinch and Rossi talked, the more I though VeeKay made just as much sense. I don’t listen to many podcasts, but I have become a regular listener to Offtrack With Hinch & Rossi. It’s funny and very informative.

This has been an interesting week to watch in IndyCar, and it’s only Friday morning. There are still some pretty big dominos to fall. One week into the offseason, and it has been anything but boring. Stay tuned.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on September 5, 2025 at 4:04 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.