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Japan
By A.J. Foyt
 In
the land of the Rising Sun, we were mostly in the shadows during the
Japan Indy 300. It was unfortunate because at the start of the race at
Twin Ring Motegi Saturday afternoon (or late Friday night for those
watching it live on TV), I thought A.J. Foyt IV was going to have his
best race of the season.
Well, to be honest, at the very start, it looked like he might not
race at all because he got such a good jump, the car broke loose and
he was sideways coming off turn four! With some quick thinking and
even quicker steering, he got the No 14 Conseco car under control and
set out to gain the spots he lost.
He picked up a couple right in the beginning and then was in hot
pursuit of Tora Takagi, Helio Castroneves and Tomas Scheckter. That's
when we had the first indication of trouble.
 On
lap 23, he radioed in that the engine quit. We told him to switch over
to a different fuel map and he coasted into the pits. Team Conseco
took off the engine cover and couldn't find anything obviously wrong
other than the low fuel pressure reading on the dash so we loaded him
up with fuel, changed tires and sent him out. We lost close to 10
laps.
Our strategy had gone from racing for the win to surviving the race.
Seventeen laps later he radioed in again with the same problem; it was
going to be a busy day in our pits. He pitted for fuel and was on his
way.
We figured out he had to pit when the fuel level dropped below 10
gallons. We didn't always bring him in early enough and the erratic
behavior of the fuel-starved engine caused some problems in the
transmission. By halfway, A.J. IV lost fourth gear. The gearbox began
really malfunctioning so we brought him in on the next yellow flag and
switched it out. The replacement took about 20 laps to complete.
A.J. IV did a good job of running fast enough to finish the race but
not so hard as to be in the way of the guys racing for the win. That
is not easy to do because it is hard to get a rhythm when you
constantly have to move over for the cars in contention. He handled it
with the maturity he has shown in every outing this year.
When the checkered flag waved for Dan Wheldon, A.J. IV was 31 laps
down but he was able to pick up seven spots because of his
perseverance. He finished 15th and remains 16th in the IRL standings.
As teams were packing up their stuff in the containers to ship the
equipment back to the States, our guys had the Conseco car apart so we
could determine what was causing our problem. I believe it was the new
fuel lines that Toyota Racing Development requested us to use. Somehow
the lines were incompatible with the methanol fuel and they weakened
as things heated up. The weakness caused the fuel pressure to drop.
TRD is taking the lines in question back to their shop for better
analysis but you can be sure I've seen enough already. The only
consolation is that it happened in the race before the Indianapolis
500.
We're hoping that is the race where the sun will rise and my grandson
will really shine! |
