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I haven't been to Nazareth, Pa. since 1995 and nothing much has changed. That one mile tri-oval track is still as tricky to figure out as the weather. And I didn't have much luck figuring out either this past weekend.

In fact our team was a little under the weather following Eliseo Salazar's terrible crash while testing at Indy earlier in the week. Eliseo was doing me a favor by driving Airton Dare's No. 14 Harrah's car. Airton had gone fast the first day but then lost speed the second day and I just wanted to make sure it wasn't the car. Eliseo cracked off two laps in the 220's and was coming into the pits when he never made it through turn one.

A combination of factors including gusty winds, a new track surface and Eliseo rolling out of the throttle contributed to the crash. I think a gust of wind caught him. He hit the wall hard with the left rear and it sounded bad. He was knocked out for several minutes but came to during his ride to Methodist Hospital. He underwent emergency surgery to repair a torn artery that night. They had to crack open his sternum to reach it, and it is the sternum that will take so long to heal. Eliseo will probably be out of the No. 11 car for the rest of the season although his goal is to be back racing by September. In any case, his accident certainly put a damper on our week.

By Thursday, I still wasn't sure if I was going to run Eliseo's car at Nazareth. I had calls from drivers on Wednesday but didn't decide anything. Richie Hearn was in our garage area when I arrived. He took the red-eye from Las Vegas on the chance that he might get the ride.

I figured since we had the car and crew all there we might as well run so I told them to fit Richie in the car.

Practice on Friday really had me scratching my head. The drivers were comfortable but we just weren't very fast. Airton, who had won the Indy Lights race at Nazareth in 1999, struggled to find speed in the Harrah's No.14 Indy car. I changed the set-up pretty radically from Friday to Saturday and both drivers preferred that but we didn't have enough time to work with it.

Airton qualified 17th and Richie qualified 22nd. Our approach going into this race was to be patient, avoid the crashes and keep our eye on the weather. I think that was everyone's plan, but some teams did it better than others.

The Firestone Indy 225 was a weird race. Half of it was run under caution (112 laps, a record) because of either crashes or light rain showers.

In the race, Airton had moved up to 13th but as cars kept crashing, he moved up even more. He got as high as seventh in the Harrah's Dallara but then he got tagged by Billy Boat. According to the spotter, he did a great job saving it. We dropped back to 11th.

Then he had a problem shifting on the final restart. He lost a lot of track position but he also lost fourth and fifth gear, which meant he'd have trouble passing. He closed in on 10th spot but he couldn't do anything with it. He finished 11th and is currently 11th in the points.

We missed on pit strategy too. We discussed pitting Airton around lap 150 and now I kick myself that we didn't because we would have had plenty of fuel left the way the yellows worked out. We may not have won but we would have easily been in the top five because of the track position we would have gained when everyone else made their final pitstops.

Richie's biggest problem in the race was starting so deep in the field. He got blocked in the early stages and then he got lapped. Unlike NASCAR, the IRL doesn't let the lapped cars start inside of the lead lap cars on restarts. The only hope you have to unlap yourself is to stay out when all the leaders pit. Unfortunately, not all of the leaders pitted on the yellows as some teams were playing different pit strategies. We never got our lap back and Richie ended up 14th.

Scott Sharp won the race despite the fact that Roger Penske's team really was the class of the field and should have won. Gil deFerran was leading on the final lap when he ran out of fuel. He ended up third. That brought back memories because in 1994, Eddie Cheever was leading the race in my car when he ran out of fuel on the last lap and ended up fifth. Who won that day? Emerson Fittipaldi in Roger Penske's car.

Like I said, nothing much has changed at Nazareth.

Personally I am looking forward to getting back to Indy next month because the Indianapolis 500 is the race I live for.

And that has never changed.