It's ironic that, less than two years after Queensland's Gold Coast lost its Indy race, a Queenslander has become the top banana in Indy racing.

Will Power is having a history-making season in the IndyCar championship, a series of predominantly American races but dominated by foreign drivers.

Power's won a third of the races this season - three of nine.

He's the only driver with multiple wins. He saluted at the first two rounds - at Sao Paulo, Brazil, and St Petersburg, Florida - and on the weekend at Watkins Glen in upstate New York.

This is the 29-year-old from Toowoomba's first full season in contemporary Indy racing and all these triumphs come less than a year after a crash in which his back was broken.

He gave the mighty Penske Racing team of automotive billionaire Roger Penske pole position for the sixth straight year at Watkins Glen, but became the first driver to convert any of those poles into victory.

He not only leads the series by 32 points from Scotsman and Indianapolis 500 victor Dario Franchitti but is 70 points clear in the new award for the road and street racing rounds in the championship named in honor of the legendary Mario Andretti.

Power is still getting to grips with the other tracks, ovals, for which there is now a separate title too named after the equally legendary A.J. Foyt.

Yesterday at Watkins Glen, a famous road course that once hosted the US Formula One Grand Prix, Power led an Aussie quinella, with Ryan Briscoe - of Sydney, and a Penske Racing teammate - 1.2 seconds behind him at the chequered flag.

Briscoe was the winner of the last Indy race on the Gold Coast in October 2008, although by that stage the event had lost its championship status.

The IndyCar series organisers wanted a bigger fee to bring the show to Australia and they demanded the race be brought forward on the calendar so they could conclude the championship in the US in September.

But October suited the Gold Coast best.

There was an impasse and now - after last year's A1 GP no-show - this year's carnival on the streets of Surfers' Paradise on October 22-24 becomes a V8 Supercar endurance event, with many of the top IndyCar drivers - including Power, Briscoe, Franchitti and Brisbane-born New Zealand and dual series champion Scott Dixon - as guest co-drivers.

Power will be with Ford's factory team that weekend and Briscoe with Holden's.

There are dangers in all this though - open-wheeler, sports car and other forms of touring car aces unfamiliar with the much heavier Aussie sedans paired with local heroes who should be vying for the V8 Supercar Championship.

Any foul-ups by the visitors could prove very costly.

Although it was always called Indy, the Gold Coast carnival was for many years a race for Champ Cars, a now-defunct American rival of IndyCar.

Power was one of the stars of Champ Car in its death throes and a drawcard at the Gold Coast, although he could never translate his pace-setting speed there into a race victory.

Not so these days in the IndyCar championship.

Watkins Glen was perhaps his finest moment in a stellar season.

"It's very satisfying when you fight for it and you've got someone on your tail right to the end," he said.

But while Power is making history he's not such a great student of it.

In the euphoria of Watkins Glen he said he was delighted to have won at the historic circuit as fellow Australian Sir Jack Brabham "won here in 1959, '60 and '66".

No he didn't.

Brabham won his three Formula One world titles in those years, but he never won the US grand prix.

His best was third at Watkins Glen in 1965, behind the late Englishman Graham Hill and American Dan Gurney.

Five times he was fourth - three times at Watkins Glen, once at Riverside in California, and most memorably in 1959 at Sebring in Florida, when he pushed his Cooper car the last few hundred metres to clinch his first world title.

Another time at The Glen he was fifth.

What Brabham is otherwise best known for in the US is showing the Americans at the Indianapolis 500 that nimble rear-engined open-wheeler racing cars were superior to their traditional, bulky, front-engined roadsters.

Was Brabham the last Australian to win at Watkins Glen, Power asked himself out loud.

No, as we've pointed out, he didn't even win there.

And Power forgot that Alan Jones did - on October 5, 1980, just a week after he clinched his F1 world title in Montreal, Canada.

"Okay, I missed that one. Damn," Power said.

Considering that was almost five months before his birth, and Brabham's time was even longer ago, the gap in Power's knowledge is forgivable.

But as much as there is great sentimentality about Watkins Glen as the home of European-style road racing in America, yesterday's race highlighted the headaches for the IndyCar championship, with crowds particularly sparse.

But even the Indy 500 is no longer the biggest American motor race on Memorial Day each May, certainly in terms of TV audience.

That distinction now goes to NASCAR's World 600 at Charlotte, North Carolina.

And the biggest worry for the IndyCar championship organisers must be that only one driver in the top 12 finishers at Watkins Glen was American - Ryan Hunter-Reay in seventh.

As sweet as it was to see Aussies fill the top two spots on the podium, you've got to wonder where that leaves Indy racing headed.