Power wants Bathurst 1000 shot with McLaughlin

The 2014 IndyCar champion and 2018 Indy 500 winner has competed once in The Great Race at Mt. Panorama, sharing a Larkham Motorsport Ford Falcon with Mark Larkham in 2002. The duo qualified 16^th from the 40 cars entered, and finished 18^th.

But now Power wants to compete there again, alongside McLaughlin.

Although McLaughlin switches full-time to the NTT IndyCar Series in 2021, and Team Penske is ending its six-year partnership with Dick Johnson Racing, team owner and icon Roger Penske has pledged to help DJR in its transition back to ‘solo’ status. Part of that gesture is in allowing McLaughlin to return to the DJR squad as a co-driver in the 2021 Bathurst 1000.

But now Power has revealed that he too wants to return to the legendary race and drive a wildcard entry with McLaughlin, the 2019 Bathurst 1000 winner.

Power told Wide World of Sports Channel 9, "That's something I would be pushing for! That would be great if we could do that.

"If everything was normal with travel, it would be much easier for Roger to agree to that if Scott was involved, because he's got so much experience. It wouldn't be like having two rookies in the car. He'd be able to get me up to speed very quickly.

"I've been asking for that, it's something I've wanted to do for a while… It's a tough ask to compete with the guys who are driving in the series full time, but I still want to do it, because I'm Australian, and that's Australia's equivalent of the Indy 500."

Power said he wanted to go the wildcard route rather than team up with a full season entrant because "you'd hate to be the guy who ruined someone's championship. You don't want to turn up and spend the entire weekend getting up to speed.”

Alexander Rossi and James Hinchcliffe were the last IndyCar fulltimers to race the Bathurst 1000 in 2019.