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Nashville
By A.J. Foyt
 The
Firestone Indy 200 at Nashville Superspeedway is a tough event for several
reasons. It is a two-day race which means you practice, qualify and do your
final practice all on the same day. The track has a concrete surface, and is the
only one like that on the Indy Racing League IndyCar Series circuit, so the
track is unique. Also unique is its size; at 1.33 miles, it is bigger our short
tracks but smaller than our superspeedways.
Now that I've lined up all the reasons, I can tell you I didn't do a very good
job setting up A.J. IV's car for the race at night. The car was pretty good in
the day-time practice but the problem was that we were racing at night.
We came to the Music City with mixed emotions. Last year at this event, we
crashed everything we had. This year our IRL open test at Nashville didn't go
very well; but that was my fault because I wasn't aware of a particular bar that
we had in the rear of the car. I pretty much knew things would be better on race
weekend. And they were. A.J. IV went 6 mph faster on his second hot lap in the
Conseco Dallara than he did all day in the open test.
 We
did do better than last year because A.J. IV was able to finish the race but he
worked awful hard to keep it off the fence all night long. I missed on the
set-up and that poor kid had a handful of steering right from the start.
We made changes when we could on the pit stops but some of those changes
triggered other problems in the car's handling so it became a long night for my
19-year-old grandson. The changes that needed to be made couldn't be done on pit
lane so he was pretty much stuck with a bad deal.
It got a little hairy for him at times, especially when the car was bottoming
out so hard that it was skating across the track towards the outside walls. Then
the leaders began to lap him and he did his best to give them room while trying
to keep his own car under control. He had to run even slower in those
circumstances because the racing was so tight. And he'd get out of the racing
groove, get into the marbles and have to slow down until he could get his tires
cleaned off and pick up the pace again.
I wouldn't have blamed him if he wanted to park it.
What is encouraging to me is that he soldiered on throughout the race. He has
been improving with each race and even when he has a tough race like he did this
weekend, he is learning and gaining experience.
He's not the only one who is learning this year. I am learning what he likes in
a car and I'm trying hard to find it in these new cars. It's harder to find the
Conseco car's ‘sweet spot' at some tracks than it is at others. I'm sure he was
wishing I was a quicker study this past weekend.
We'll get it together at Michigan. I've raced there quite a bit in my career.
The only time that A.J. IV ran there, he won--last year in the Infiniti Pro
Series race. His expectations for that track are even higher than mine, and his
record is certainly is. |
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