Mid Ohio
By A.J. Foyt


Mid Ohio is a pretty little road course in the middle of Ohio that our team has run pretty well at since the IZOD IndyCar Series began running there in 2007. But our experience at this 2.25-mile twisty, natural terrain road course over the weekend started out bad. That surprised us since we had a pretty good test there at the end of June. We came into the weekend confident that we could keep up our top-10 finishing record with the ABC Supply car.


After the first practice session on Friday afternoon, we had to make some changes and then more changes after the second session on Saturday morning. The car was better than it started out but it was not as good as it needed to be.


When Vitor qualified 12th out of the 14 cars in our qualifying group we knew it was going to be difficult to maintain that top-10 finishing record. To top it off, we had a pretty tough group. If we had been in the first group, our time would have been seventh quick! That meant we would have started 13th instead of 24th.


I think they need to add one more session to the qualifying format to make it fairer for everyone and I’ll explain why.


According to the knockout qualifying session we have now, the field is divided into two groups which are decided by pulling either a blue or red marble (I think) at the first driver’s meeting. At Mid-Ohio, our group was 14 cars and the other group was 13 cars but Milka Duno wasn’t allowed to qualify because she didn’t meet minimum speed requirements. And that is a whole other thing which I won’t go into. So that made the groups 12 and 14, instead of 13 each.


The top six out of each group go on to the next round of qualifying. Those who don’t make it past Round 1 are lined up this way: the Group 1 cars on the inside lane and the Group 2 cars on the outside lane. That is how the guy next to Vitor was 3 and half seconds slower!


Someone suggested adding a 10-minute qualifying session for the 12 to 16 cars that don’t advance. I think that is a good idea. Yeah, it would add a little time to qualifying but it would give those cars the chance to line up according to their speed within the group which would be fairer and probably safer. The final grid would make more sense and that would be good for the fans. The officials should think about it for next year.


After qualifying, we talked about making more changes to the car which we did but they weren’t major ones like we had to do at the last three events. We had a good warm-up practice on race morning—so the changes worked. There’s a part of me that wishes the rest of the season was on road courses because I think we’re finally starting to gel with Vitor and our engineer Jeff Britton on these type tracks.


Yeah, how crazy is that – me wanting to run more road courses? Well I think you see my point.


In the Honda Indy 200 race, Vitor ran good and stayed out of trouble. My ABC Supply crew gave him good, clean pit stops so I’m glad that the changes we made several races ago are working for us. He climbed up to 15th by making a couple passes on the restarts but mostly by not making mistakes like some other drivers. I know 15th isn’t much to brag about but we learned a lot and it should make us stronger when we come back next year.


Our team is heading out to Infineon Raceway in northern California to test this Friday. I’m trying not to think about it being Friday the 13th! The ABC Supply transporter will stay out at the track while the crew flies home Friday night and then returns next week for the race.


The Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma will be broadcast live by Versus on Sunday, August 22nd starting at 5 p.m. ET. I hope you’ll tune in.