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California
By A.J. Foyt
 The
California Speedway is a two-mile banked oval within miles of Ontario
Motor Speedway, a 2.5-mile superspeedway where I won races in both the
stock cars and Indy cars. When Ontario was built, it was "state of the
art." Now it's a shopping mall, pretty sad for a beautiful facility
that would make the current California Speedway pale in comparison.
I had some good races at the old track, winning in both Indy cars and
stocks cars. Once or twice I did it on the same weekend. But that
happened a long time ago.
I'm back in southern California racing Indy cars but now it's with my
grandson A.J. Foyt IV driving. He is not enjoying the success I did in
this part of the country.
Not yet anyway, but he will.
I'll tell you why. He never gives up. He toughs it out when things
aren't going well. Like on race day, the car wasn't working real good
at the start. I told him to adjust his bars to compensate which he can
do from the cockpit while he's racing. But something was wrong with
the sway bars (and I'll know more when the Conseco car get back to the
shop), so when he made the adjustment, the bars wouldn't lock in
place. I can tell that by looking on the computer's telemetry.
So on the first pit stop, we made some adjustments in other areas to
compensate for the "push" he was experiencing. Or, as he radioed in,
'The car won't turn."
Making matters worse, we had problems with our fuel vent in the pit
side fuel tank which cost us time on the pit stops. That was really
frustrating because we had good pit stops in the last several races.
Despite all the problems, A.J. IV ran pretty good in the Conseco
G-Force/Toyota for the first half of the race. As the race wore on,
though, the car's handling went away again, probably due to a couple
sets of scuffed tires we put on.
The weather didn't help either because it was really hot. I mean
really hot-the temperatures were in the low 100s. When it's that hot,
the track gets greasy and slick. Trying to keep a car in the groove at
speeds of 220 mph on a slick track is hard even when your car is
handling.
A.J. IV became frustrated trying to figure out what the car was going
to do next. When that happens to a driver, he can lose his rhythm in
driving and end up making a bad situation worse.
He finished 17th, not spectacular but at least he finished. There was
a time earlier in the year that he might have ended up in the wall but
he's matured a lot.
As a rookie, he's going through a tough time this season. But our race
team isn't making it any easier on him because of the mistakes we've
made. I know we should have had some top-10 finishes this year and
it's hard for both of us to believe that we don't.
We had a long talk on the ride home. Well I talked; he listened and
answered some questions. I'm sure he was wishing we were racing some
place close like Texas (which he gets to on his own) instead of
California. Between the flight to Houston on my jet and the ride to
the ranch, I had lots of time to get my points across. I told him some
areas that he needed to work on and the things that the crew needed to
work on.
And we're starting now. We'll test at Texas Motor Speedway this week
to get a baseline for our final race of the year there October 12th.
Our goal is to finish the year on a high note and have a good run at
Texas. And I think we will. But if it doesn't work out that way, we'll
just dig in our heels and work that much harder over the winter. A.J.
Foyt IV doesn't give up and neither will I. I never have. |
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