Qualified!!
By A.J. Foyt


Qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 comes with its own kind of pressure and I don’t care how long you’ve been doing it, it never gets any easier. And you just don’t know the relief a driver feels when you get in the race. You might be disappointed with the run but you’re still very relieved to get in the race.


And the sooner you do it, the better.


Qualifying at Indy is different from any other race and it’s always been complicated. A couple years ago, they managed to make it even more complicated and a little more exciting for the fans. They limited the number of cars that could lock in their positions to 11 a day. And while it used to be you had three chances to get in the race with your car for the whole month, now you have three chances a day to get in the race.


The thing to remember is that when the 33 car field is set, it is the fastest 33 cars lined up in the order of the days they qualified: Pole Day, Second Day Qualifying, Third Day Qualifying and Bump Day.


We didn’t get in on Pole Day because we didn’t have the speed in practice to be in the top 11 so I didn’t even put them in line to qualify. The track conditions weren’t good because it was very windy. Several cars spun and hit the wall.


We ran Sunday. Vitor Meira qualified first and his speed was fast enough but then the No. 14 car was disqualified because the rear track width didn’t pass the post-qualifying tech inspection. My grandson Anthony also made a qualifying run but he brushed the wall so we figured his 220 average speed wouldn’t hold. We were still looking for more speed with both ABC Supply Dallara/Honda/Firestone cars.


I decided to make some big changes to the set-ups because our specially-made stuff for Indy wasn’t worth a damn—it may be good in the future but right here, right now, it was slowing us down.


We went back to the basics and picked up three miles an hour! A little embarrassing but I didn’t care. We tried it first with Vitor’s No. 14 ABC Supply car and we knew right away. He said the car didn’t feel that much different to him driving-wise, it was just faster. He put it in the race at a four-lap average speed of 223.054mph--third quick for the day and fast enough to have gotten in the first day. He bumped Anthony from the field, which we expected. Vitor will start 14th—same place we started last year but the competition is stronger this year.


Vitor qualified with two hours left. We tried a slightly different set-up with Anthony’s No. 41 ABC Supply car and he still wasn’t fast enough so I told them to put Vitor’s set-up on Anthony’s car…right there in pit lane. We didn’t have time to go back to the garage.


I know he was nervous – I had fussed at him a little bit earlier in the day but I think he understood I was trying to help him. Most drivers wouldn’t like watching the mechanics run around making changes to the car while sitting in it in pit lane--wondering if they screwed all the nuts and bolts tight. But Anthony had trust in me and our ABC Supply team and he went out and ran a lap at 223.5 mph! He asked for a little more security in the rear of the car, and we made a couple more adjustments and rolled him into line to qualify.


I told him he just needed to be fast enough to get it in—high 221 mph laps would do it.


He gave me a little more—all of his laps were in the 222 mph range which gave him a little cushion speed wise. He qualified at 222.586mph and will start 19th.


I think he did a fine job especially considering he hadn’t been in an Indy car since last October.


When we started the week out, we had both ABC Supply cars in race set-ups to get the drivers used to the speeds here at Indy and they were both very comfortable with the cars. So now that we’re in the race, we’ll focus on the race set-ups when we get back on the track Thursday. We have a good baseline so we won’t need to do too much because the drivers really like their cars.


Me? I like the fact that we’re in the show with no worries of getting bumped. For as long as I’ve been doing this, qualifying at Indy is still a pressure-filled day. That hasn’t changed. Neither has the feeling when you get your cars in the show--it still feels great!