Will Power, driver of the No 12 Verizon Business Team Penske Chevrolet says that the team will launch a full scale investigation into why his seat belts failed twice during Sunday’s season-ending Big Machine Music City Grand Prix at Nashville Super Speedway.
Power went into the race 33 points behind Alex Palou however, early in the race he discovered that his belt had come undone and was forced to make an emergency pit-stop which put the Australian five laps down on the leaders and out of championship contention.
Power revealed after the race that the same thing happened ten laps from the end of the race.
It was not an issue that he has ever experienced before and speaking following the action, he congratulated Alex Palou.
On the lap belt, I’m like ‘man, that was weird.’ It felt kind of loose in the car. Came out of turn two and I’m feeling around, and I felt the end of the belt as it goes in. I thought ‘Man, my belt just fell off, we’re going to have to pit.’ It took five laps to… It could’ve happened a second time at the race. We learned how to do it quickly. If we’d known that… That’s a very abnormal thing. I just don’t know what went wrong. We’ll have to send it back to the manufacturer. Very strange failure. I do wonder if I hit the wall and if it did break, if I was going to have a real bad situation, but never have that before. You have (other issues). Disappointing, but big congrats to Alex (Palou). Tough guy to beat. Ganassi did a great job this year. Been fun racing those guys this year. We dropped back to fourth (in the championship) because of this day, but man, if you don’t win it doesn’t matter. But happy with the season. The whole team won about half of the races. We did well. I want to win that championship, so I’ll come back fighting next year.”