Will Power's likeness added to 

the Borg-Warner Trophy 

History was made at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum on December 5, 2018, with the debut of the newest face on the Borg-Warner Trophy™. Will Power, winner of the 102nd Indianapolis 500 in May, is the 105th face to be permanently fixed to the trophy. Besides displaying Indianapolis 500 champions, the trophy features a 24-karat gold head portrait of the late Speedway Owner and President Anton “Tony” Hulman Jr. in tribute to his rejuvenation of the track and the Indianapolis 500 after World War II.

Sculptor William Behrends uses a multi-phase process to create the three-dimensional masterpiece. To design the image, Behrends, who has been crafting faces to adorn the trophy since 1990, conducted a multi-phase process that took months to complete.

The process started with a series of photographic headshots taken of Power that was completed with an in-studio session where Power posed while Behrends worked on a full-scale clay model of his face to better capture Power’s personality. The life-size clay model was then scaled down to a smaller clay image, which was perfected in polysulfide rubber and plaster, among a series of other processes, to refine the image.  

Eventually, the image was cast in wax, cleaned up and sent to a jeweler to transform the image from wax to sterling silver. Once that was complete, Behrends polished, buffed and refined the image before affixing it to the Borg-Warner Trophy. 

The Borg-Warner Trophy features the sterling silver image of every Indianapolis '500' winner dating back to Ray Harroun in 1911. Made of sterling silver, the trophy with base weighs 110 pounds and stands 5 feet, 4-3/4 inches tall and is currently valued at $3.5 million.  

Since its inception, the Borg-Warner trophy has become one of the most recognizable trophies in sports with drivers from 12 countries and 21 of the United States represented on its base and cup. The trophy is on permanent display at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, located on the grounds of the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

In 1935, The Borg-Warner Automotive Company (now called BorgWarner) commissioned designer Robert J. Hill and Spaulding-Gorham, Inc., of Chicago, to create the trophy at a cost of $10,000. The trophy was unveiled at a 1936 dinner hosted by then-Speedway owner Eddie Rickenbacker who officially declared it was the annual prize for Indianapolis 500 victors.  The first driver to be bestowed the honor was Louis Meyer who was presented with the trophy featuring the previous 24 winner’s faces.

The last driver to have his likeness placed on the original trophy was Bobby Rahal in 1986. With all the squares filled, a new base was added in 1987, which itself was filled following Gil de Ferran’s victory in 2003. For 2004, Borg-Warner commissioned a new base that will not be filled until 2034.

To give the winner and team owner a personal keepsake of their victory, BorgWarner established the BorgWarner Championship Driver’s Trophy™ (also known as the “Baby Borg”) in and the BorgWarner Team Owner’s Trophy™. Both are 18-inch tall sterling silver replicas of the Borg-Warner Trophy. On December 5, 2018 Power received his first “Baby Borg,” while car owner Roger Penske has seventeen of the replicas.   

BorgWarner is the Official Turbocharger Partner of the Verizon™ IndyCar Series with its Engineered for Racing (EFR) turbocharger. BorgWarner’s innovative engineering and materials expertise are race proven, with more than 1.25 million trouble-free miles since 2012, on high-speed oval tracks, road courses, street courses and short oval tracks.

Assembled in Asheville, North Carolina, the EFR turbos provide an unprecedented combination of advanced technologies, including Low-weight Gamma-TiAI (titanium aluminide) turbine wheels and shaft assemblies for quick boost response, patent-pending dual-row ceramic ball bearing cartridges for more thrust capacity, durability and turbine efficiency at low expansion ratios and investment-cast stainless-steel turbine housing for increased efficiency, improved durability and corrosion resistance.

All photographs and information provided by BorgWarner