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Chicagoland
By A.J. Foyt
 I
had high hopes going into this weekend at Chicagoland Speedway in
Joliet, Illinois but nothing turned out the way I had hoped for my
Harrah's Racing teams. All in all, we were lucky it turned out like it
did because it could have been much worse.
The weekend started out pretty good. We were running just two Indy
cars with Airton Dare and Eliseo Salazar plus we had A.J. Foyt IV in
the Infiniti Pro Series. Practice went smoothly for everyone and while
our qualifying runs in the Indy Racing League were disappointing, we
still felt we had good cars for the race.
In Pro Series qualifying, my grandson A.J. won the pole for the third
time this year. I was feeling pretty good about his chances on Sunday
because the last two times he won the pole, he won the race. If he had
done that, he could have clinched the title.
Things were a little different this time around. For one thing, the
Pro Series race ran after the Indy car race, probably because of a TV
commitment. The Pro Series put in a different rules package for the
rear wing which made the cars run even closer together than normal.
A.J. IV didn't win the race – he finished sixth. He made a mistake
trying to regain the lead where he did and got shuffled back. As tight
as those cars ran – he just couldn't get back up there to challenge
for the lead. He probably learned more in that race about drafting
than he did in the races that he won.
Now the title run comes down to the last race of the season in our
home state of Texas. If A.J. IV doesn't let the pressure get to him,
he still has a good shot to win it since he is leading Arie Luyendyk
Jr. by 28 points. We'll have to sweat it out this week and hope
everything goes our way next Saturday.
The Indy car drivers turned in one of the closest finishes in IRL
history--with Sam Hornish edging out Al Unser Jr. by 24-thousandths of
a second or six inches! But we weren't part of it (unlike the last
time at Texas in June when Al got beaten by Jeff Ward). Our day ended
early.
I should have known it wasn't going to be our day when we had an
accident in our pit during the first round of pitstops. When Airton
was leaving the pit, his rear tire clipped the tires that were just
taken off of Eliseo's car (Eliseo had pitted ahead of Airton). The
tires bounced into crew chief Billy Spencer who got tossed in the air
and came down flat on the concrete. Despite being skinny, Billy's
nickname is "Bull" and now I know why. After a couple seconds, he just
picked himself up, shook it off and continued on. He had me worried
there for a little but but Billy's from Texas so he's tougher than
most.
Eliseo had a freak thing happen to him when the rear wing collapsed
and he spun down into the infield grass. Somehow he didn't hit
anything and we borrowed a wing from John Menard's team and rejoined
the race. He went out later with engine trouble.
I found out later that my crew made an error in prepping the car for
the race and I was pretty angry afterwards. There will be a meeting
about that. What puzzles me is that we had one less car to worry about
since Greg Ray started driving for Sam Schmidt. We were just very
lucky that Eliseo wasn't injured as a result of that mistake.
Airton had a pretty good day himself – he had gotten as high as fifth
after some great moves on a restart when Billy Boat had engine trouble
and the field scrambled to get by his slowing car. He had dropped back
to seventh because his car's handling started to go away a little bit.
Then he got hit from behind by rookie Tony Renna which sent Airton
into the wall. He got a bruised foot but otherwise was okay. He was
very upset with Renna who joined the IRL in mid-season after serving
as a test driver. Some of these young boys need to learn some manners
on the race track.
While it didn't turn out to be such a great day for my Harrah's Racing
team, the fans in Chicago got their money's worth with some great
racing from the IRL boys. It was pretty spectacular and I am sure we
will see more of just that kind of racing in Texas this coming
weekend. |
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