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Texas
By A.J. Foyt
 There is nothing that can compare to a great Indy car race and we had
one at Texas Motor Speedway in Ft. Worth Saturday night.
This time Airton Dare and my Harrah's No. 14 were part of the action
at the checkered flag. The top three drivers were separated by five
one-hundredths (.05) of a second – faster than the blink of an eye.
Airton was trying to nose his way into first but ran out of track so
he gave Jeff Ward the aero push he needed to edge out Al Unser Jr. by
eleven thousandths (.011) of a second. It's a new record for the Indy
Racing League which is making close finishes part of its story.
Afterwards, Airton said, "I came off turn four faster than the two of
them but I had nowhere to go. I thought about going to the grass but I
didn't think that was a good idea."
I could have thrown a blanket--heck, more like a washcloth --over the
top three cars! They were that close at the line. It was a helluva
race.
I was happy for Jeff too; he pulled off some great moves there at the
end against one of the best Indy car drivers ever in those "down to
the wire" finishes.
When the race started, Airton was going in the wrong direction. He
started ninth but he faded back to 15th. Once we got the car dialed in
after the first pitstop, Airton was able to run 217-218 mph speeds on
the longer runs. He had picked up a couple positions immediately after
the first pitstop and by the time he was ready to stop again, he was
in seventh. But, he almost stalled it leaving the pits and lost about
five spots because of the half-second of hesitation. It's a good thing
the crew had a stop under 8 seconds or it could have been even worse
for us.
Someone who was having a bad night was Greg Ray in the No. 11 Harrah's
Dallara. Right from the start he had handling problems. He was running
a different set-up from Airton because he was working with Tom Knapp
who was engineering Greg's car. They finally got it figured out by
mid-race but by then Greg had lost a lap. He never got the chance to
get his lap back, so despite running competitive times, he was going
nowhere. To make things worse, they were out of sequence on pitstops
so they gambled on the fuel mileage and lost. He ran out of fuel
coming into the pits. I know it was a long, frustrating night for
them. They hung in there though and Greg came home 12th and picked up
some points at least.
It's a tough situation because you make changes but if you can't make
them quick enough you just have to live with the car until the next
opportunity comes. At a place as fast as Texas, that is probably not
much fun.
Someone who was starting have fun was Airton. He climbed back to
eighth by his third pitstop, but another small problem in the pits (a
tire change) which cost him maybe half a second if that, lost him a
couple of positions. He stayed around 10th until the new tires warmed
up and then he began picking off positions. The leaders at the time,
Tomas Scheckter and Laurent Redon, two very fast rookies, had problems
in the pits around lap 150 and we gained a couple more spots.
Airton was on the move.
With around 40 laps to go, he moved into second right behind Li'l Al.
Our last stop came on lap 131 so I told Airton to tuck in behind Unser
thinking we could save fuel by staying in his draft. I also told him
to lean down the fuel mixture which he can do with a dial in the
cockpit. You lose a little power but it helps to save fuel. If we
caught a yellow at the right time, we might be able to make it to the
end of the 200-lap race.
There were a couple other guys thinking the same thing. There were no
yellows so we had to pit with less than 10 laps to go. Al and Airton
came in on lap 193, and we both did "splash'n'go" pitstops. That means
the fueler pops the fuel hose in, waits a couple seconds and pops it
back out and you leave in a hurry.
Despite the quickness of the stop, we came out behind Unser and
funneled into fourth behind Unser, Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves
and Ward, who had pitted a lap or two earlier. Castroneves took the
lead from Unser on lap197 and we got under Ward for third. But then
Unser got a good run and took the lead. Ward followed Unser into
second so Airton followed him and also passed Castroneves.
On the last lap the top three, Unser, Ward and Airton went down the
backstretch in single file and then Ward pulled to the outside groove
and Airton followed him. Coming off four Airton got such a good run he
could have passed them both, but he had nowhere to go.
Whew, what a race!
The crowd went crazy over the last 40 laps. When the guys starting
pitting with 10 to go, they just stood up and stayed up to the finish.
And I can't blame them. When you see a race this good and a finish
this close, it's great. It's what I love about Indy car racing, and
when you get a great race like we had Saturday, nothing else even
comes close.
Except, of course, winning a race like that.
Next time, he'll go to the grass. |
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