As he was cleared to drive on Wednesday, Will Power took time to discuss what happened to him during the weekend at St. Petersburg from the lead-in to the weekend through his being ruled out of competition.
“Yeah, feeling better, and obviously it’s great to be cleared to get back in the car again. That’s the best medicine you can have,” he said Wednesday during a conference call.
“I think obviously it was tough having to watch the race with someone else driving your car, but yeah, I mean, that’s just the way it went. Got to move forward.”
Power said he didn’t feel great going into the weekend, and things got worse as the weekend went on.
“Well, actually the third day when I turned up to track, I had very swollen glands around my ears. You know, so I wasn’t 100 percent then,” he explained.
“Obviously Dr. (Terry) Trammell and Dr. (Stephen) Olvey talked about the muscle tension, the neck was most probably the cause of the headaches. But I wasn’t -- on Friday after the crash, I was okay. But I got out, felt fine, got in the car, felt fine, did practice, and then -- yeah, it was that night that I started to feel -- started to have some of these symptoms.
“Yeah, and then that kind of continued on into Saturday and kind of got worse, and then it came to the point where I had to say something to the medical staff.”
Power pressed on through qualifying, but was less inclined to drive afterwards come Sunday.
“Before qualifying I wasn’t feeling very good, and I wasn’t sure whether I should do it or not,” he said. “I was kind of keeping it to myself, and yeah, I just thought, I’ll just go out, see how it is, and kind of did one lap on black tires, and then just kind of went from there and just kept it short. I just really was just doing one more lap and a lap and then pitting. But yeah, I wasn’t feeling good at that point.
“Sunday morning, yeah, I was, yeah, that’s when I was questioning. Obviously it’s tough to say you don’t want to get in the race car, but I just had those symptoms that the doctors had talked about. So at that point it went to this SCAT test, and yeah, determined at that point that I had all the symptoms of a concussion.
“You know, it’s tough to say. Obviously I wanted to get in the car, but on the other hand, when you feel you’ve got a concussion, that’s also very concerning.”
Power said he’s less worried going forward about matters, as his infection feels better.
“My inner ear is feeling better. I don’t have headaches or nausea, and yes, I’ll be testing Barber next Tuesday to make up for the test. Yeah, that’ll be good to get back in the car.
“Actually I had an at-Phoenix test, and I actually had the infection when I was there, and it didn’t seem to be a problem. I’m not worried about that.”