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A.J.'s Race Recaps: |
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Edmonton
 By A.J. Foyt
The IZOD IndyCar Series finished up in Canada this past weekend with a race on a temporary circuit laid out on the Edmonton’s downtown airport. It is the bumpiest track we run on. And it chews up tires which means there’s a lot of marbles, or rubber bits, off the racing line. Between the bumps and the marbles, I think everyone spun once or twice during the weekend.
When we rolled off the ABC Supply transporter, things weren’t very good. At first we were chasing the track, then the car. We had problems. And I wasn’t happy. And everyone knows that when A.J. ain’t happy, nobody’s happy. Just ask anyone on my team. I don’t think there was anyone who wasn’t ticked off at me at some point over the weekend, but I didn’t care. We had problems, I needed answers and I wasn’t very patient.
We changed some things in between Friday’s practice sessions but we had the same result—just about last on the timesheet. We made another big change Friday night and some shock changes and Vitor Meira said the car was better but still we had problems. We were still chasing the field right through qualifying.
It didn’t make sense. Going over every detail on the car Saturday night, we found a broken left rear shock and two front shocks that weren’t working the way they should have. Did I mention that Edmonton was bumpy? We re-built them that night.
In the morning warm-up, Vitor said it was like driving a different car. We made a few adjustments for the race. We had chosen to go on the black primary tires to try that alternate strategy again since we were starting in the last row alongside Tony Kanaan—he wasn’t having a great weekend either.
When the race started, Vitor looked ok but then he radioed in that the car was very loose on the high speed corners. That’s bad. Those high speed corners were the key to the race because they led onto the longest straights, aka the passing zones.
We made adjustments during the race—mostly adding front wing and by the third pit stop, Vitor said the car was better. Speaking of our pit stops—every stop was 8 seconds or less which is a major improvement.
Vitor made a great move in traffic when there was a jam-up ahead of him about midway through the race and went from 17th to 14th. About 15 laps later, cars began making their final pit stops and Vitor got as high as 12th but then he spun off the track (there was a lot of that in this race). He ran a couple laps and came in saying there was something wrong with the rear of the car. It was a little early for our fuel strategy but we needed to check the car. We fueled him and gave him a set of slightly worn reds and the problem disappeared.
It turned out he had a left rear tire going down. He ended up finishing 16th and probably would have finished 13th if he hadn’t spun so he didn’t lose too much. He’s still 12th in points but it has really tightened up around him.
Getting out of Edmonton without tearing up anything major was a small victory in itself. We’ve got a weekend off before we head to Mid-Ohio in August. We tested there last month and it went pretty good. Both Vitor and our ABC Supply team have run good at that track so we’re all looking forward to going back. The Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio will be shown live Sunday, August 8 starting at 3 p.m. ET on the Versus channel.
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Toronto
 By A.J. Foyt
I never would have thought I would be satisfied with an 11th place finish at Toronto but I have to say after all that went on this past weekend, I was damn glad to come away with just that.
We started out the weekend pretty good, at least Vitor Meira felt the ABC Supply car was pretty good. He was hanging around the top 12 in practice. Since it was his first time to the track, I thought things were going well.
We tried some new brake pads for qualifying and although they were supposed to be pre-bedded by the manufacturer, they weren’t bedded in good properly. So in qualifying, Vitor didn’t have the feel he needed to hustle the 14 car around. I called him to the pits and on that lap, he slid into a tire barrier. It didn’t hurt the car but he would have brought out a yellow if Paul Tracy hadn’t done so a couple moments before when he spun on the track.
Bringing out a yellow in qualifying means you get penalized—they take away your two best laps from the whole 15-minute session. If Vitor didn’t have the penalty he would have qualified around 16th even with the brake problem (because eventually they do get bedded in when you use them).
So as it was, we started last in the Honda Indy Toronto because Tracy was a little bit faster than Vitor on their third best laps. Starting 26th on a tight street course like Toronto is a challenge, but Vitor made it even tougher on himself!
Green flag goes down, field goes by and no Vitor! But according to the computers, the car is still running. I’m wondering where the hell is he?
He was starting outside Milka Duno because she was last in her group qualifying session which lined up on the inside. She was having trouble on the final pace lap keeping up to the field, and by the time he got by her, the field was gone. So he pushed the car too hard on cold tires and went straight into the turn 8 run-off area. He did a quick spin to get headed in the right direction and took the green flag half a lap down to the leaders—and he had to pass Milka again!
He caught and passed her by lap two and set off after the others. But I thought to myself, this is going to be a long day.
We knew starting back there that we had to do an alternate pit strategy because if the yellows fall right you can come out ahead of the leaders and actually stay ahead of them. We also wanted to run as little as possible on the red-rimmed alternate tires—the ABC Supply car handled better on the primary Firestone tires. So we started on the primary tires and when everyone else pitted around lap 17 during a full-course yellow, we stayed out along with Tracy. He was ahead of us on the track so we ran second when the race restarted.
We were lucky on that first restart. Helio Castroneves, who was running third, ran into the back of Vitor going into turn 3 (which is where a lot of accidents happened). It’s not the first time that’s happened with the 3 and 14 cars (Helio did it to Ryan Hunter-Reay last year at Iowa, knocking us out of the race before it barely got started!). This time though Helio busted up his car pretty good but Vitor was able to keep going.
Vitor stayed in the top-five until we pitted during a yellow on lap 34.We dropped back in the field but we also made this stint on the alternate tire our short stint. So we figured how long we could run on a tank and worked backwards from the end of the race to figure out the fuel window and the earliest we could pit and get back on the primary tires.
We made our final pit stop on lap 51 under green because we knew we could go the final 34 laps if we got a short yellow. It’d be close if we didn’t get a yellow but sometimes you have to gamble.
Because of other drivers crashing into each other, we had advanced to 9th by the time of the final full course yellow on lap 74. On that restart, Vitor took a run on Simona DeSilvestro heading into turn 3 (yep, the same place Helio hit him) but up ahead, everyone got jumbled up in the corner. Simona braked early and Vitor had to jam on the brakes to avoid hitting her. He locked them up and hit her anyway, but luckily, both of them were able to continue on.
Unfortunately for Vitor, that hard braking blistered his tires pretty bad. With 10 laps to go, he had to be really careful under braking. Justin Wilson, who had spun earlier while running second, passed him with six laps to go. With just two laps to go, Vitor said he locked it up a little bit and ran wide and that’s when Dan Wheldon snuck by for 10th.
I was hoping to salvage a top 10 out of it but even 11th felt pretty good with the way this race went. The ABC crew gave Vitor good pit stops. The stops have been a problem this year but we’ve changed up some things and it seems to be working.
Was I okay with finishing 11th? On that day, in that race, yes I was. The ABC Supply Dallara/Honda was in one piece and we gained a position in the point standings—we’re now 12th. It wasn’t pretty but we survived and sometimes you have to be satisfied with that.
We head back to Canada on Thursday for the Honda Indy Toronto race in Edmonton this weekend. That track is pretty bumpy but what I like about it is that you can see the whole track because it’s laid out on an airport. You can see it if you tune into Versus this Sunday starting at 5pm ET. |
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