A.J. has a sense of humor -- he needs one
to wear a hat like this!
A.J. Foyt won his fourth Indy
500 in this car which was designed and built in his Houston raceshop.
California IRL Race Report
By A.J. Foyt
The fans that came to the Yamaha Indy 400 at California Speedway in
Fontana, Calif. Sunday afternoon saw one of the best races in the Indy
Racing League's seven-year existence.
Five drivers swapped the lead back and forth at speeds over 220 mph
for 200 laps! Coming down to the checkered flag, Sam Hornish edged out
Jaques Lazier by two-hundredths of a second! That's about three feet
after 400 miles. I used to love those kinds of wins.
For me, it was a weekend I'd rather forget.
My race teams really weren't part of the action. It was one of my most
frustrating weekends to date. We were off the mark in our set-ups from
the get-go and we never got any better.
Airton Dare started 21st and finished 13th in the No. 14 Harrah's
Dallara and is now 11th in points. Eliseo Salazar started 15th and
finished 15th in the No. 11 Banco Chile car; he slipped to fifth in
the points. Salazar's problems were compounded by a bad pitstop which
required another pitstop the following lap.
Looking back, I think missing the IRL's open test at California
Speedway in early February hurt both the cars' and drivers'
performances. I had to make a choice between that test and a private
test at Phoenix because of some schedule conflicts with my NASCAR
team; now I wish we had gone to California instead of Arizona.
Hindsight's always 20-20.
The weather didn't help; it was unusually cool in southern California
and rain cut into our practice time. The wind blew pretty strong and
the track was sandy which also added to our problems. It seemed that
for one step forward, we took two backward.
Dare and Salazar both said that the cars were comfortable to drive,
too comfortable I think, because neither one of them were in the
top-10 all weekend. It was either too much downforce or not enough
power, or both.
We thought the downforce would help during the race because that's
when the track gets hot and greasy and you need the downforce to
maneuver through the traffic. Unfortunately, we were "the traffic"
this past weekend.
So I am looking closely at our whole package and making some wholesale
changes to our set-ups. What used to work isn't working for us any
more. I am also looking at our engines and finding ways to increase
the power output there too. We will test these new set-ups at Indy in
mid-April.
This week I will drive from Houston to Texas Motor Speedway in Ft.
Worth for a test with my Conseco Pontiac. My son Larry is bringing his
No. 14 Harrah's Monte Carlo to test also. We have a race at TMS the
weekend after Easter and we want to make a strong showing in our home
state. Following our test, we come back to Houston to celebrate Easter
with the family. We are all looking forward to it.
I hope you and your family have safe and happy holiday. We'll see you
at the races!
Dick Ralstins Racing Stories
