Japan
By AJ Foyt

Well another race in Japan is in the books and this time we came away with a clean race weekend for the first time since we started going there in 2003.

Twin Ring Motegi is a beautiful facility but it’s an odd-shaped track—it looks like an egg—and it is very tricky. The weather changes constantly (it sits on top of a mountain) and it can be very challenging for a driver and a team.

Our past few race weekends there haven’t gone well. Usually we’re coming home with a car in pieces (and we’re not the only ones, believe me) so I felt pretty good about this trip overall.

We didn’t finish as well as we hoped to but we learned a lot and I think we made a breakthrough on our oval track set-up. Both Darren Manning and I know we have some work to do in that area but we seem to be making progress.

We had trouble the first day of practice, and pretty much had to throw out that whole day. We learned what not to do to the car for Darren. We went in a different direction on Friday but Darren had only 45 minutes of practice before we went out to qualify. We knew the car was better but still had to fine tune it. There is no final practice on the ovals anymore so if you don’t have the car figured out by qualifying, you are in trouble because you are out of time.

Darren started last but he felt pretty confident about the race. He liked the way the car was driving, which was not the case on Thursday, our first day of practice. But I was concerned because when you start that far back on a track where it’s hard to pass, you can get down a lap pretty quickly—especially when you have hot dogs like Helio Castroneves and Dan Wheldon setting the pace.

Darren didn’t waste too much time as he went from 18 to 13^th pretty quickly. However, as the track changed, so did the handling on the ABC Supply car. We made some adjustments during the pit stops and by the last stint, Darren was very happy with the car. He said it was ‘sweet.’ I’ve never described a car that way but I’m sure he has heard me say things different too.  

I knew he was happy with the car because we were running laps comparable to the leaders. We were looking at a top 10 finish until we had to dash in the pits with four laps to go for a splash of fuel. We finished 12^th.

Coming away from Japan, we feel like we have a good baseline set-up for the ovals. I think we’ll find out pretty quick at Kansas this week just how good it is. Qualifying won’t be quite so important there because the pack runs two and three wide so if you can hang in the draft, you can contend for the win.

Still Kansas will be tough because it is just a two-day show—two hours of practice and then qualify on Saturday and race on Sunday. For the teams that have been together it’s no big deal but the teams with new drivers, it’s a little bit tougher because you’re still learning what the driver wants. 

But we’ve won at Kansas before (twice in one day with the IndyCar and Indy Pro Series car) so hopefully we’ll have a good showing there to lead into my 50^th straight Indy 500. The Kansas race will be broadcast live this Sunday on ESPN2 starting at 3:30pm eastern time. Tune in!