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Kansas
By A.J. Foyt
 Racing
in America's heartland is one of the best ways I know to celebrate the
Fourth of July. The Argent Mortgage Kansas Indy 300 at Kansas Speedway
wasn't full of fireworks but it sizzled at the end as Buddy Rice edged
out teammate Vitor Meira by five-thousandths of a second! That's about
seven inches at over 200 mph.
It was exciting.
 I
was excited too that my grandson A.J. Foyt IV was headed towards his
first top-10 finish. Unfortunately, a bad pitstop proved very costly.
Still my Team Conseco didn't give up and A.J. IV came home 13th which
is the second best finish we've had this year.
We had a pretty solid weekend going in the Toyota-powered Conseco/Dallara.
The car improved with each session so that by final practice we were
ninth quickest. A.J. IV wasn't super comfortable in that session
though so I made some changes to the car before the race and I
probably went a little too far.
An accident on the opening lap caused by a combination of the flagman
being late with the green flag and overanxious drivers trying to
adjust, meant we didn't really get started until lap six. By lap seven
we knew we had problems because the car was pushing too much which
made it hard to turn in the corners.
A.J. IV had to run slower and he went from 13th to 18th in less than
20 laps. He knew he had to hold on until the first pitstop when we
could adjust on the car's set-up. We were hoping for another yellow
but that didn't happen so we pitted under green on lap 53. My guys
dialed in some more front wing and it made all the difference in the
world.
 A.J.
IV came back to 13th by the next pitstop 50 laps later. That doesn't
sound like much but it was all under green flag conditions which meant
he had to work harder and run faster to regain the positions he'd lost
because there was no yellow flag to close up the field. He was running
laps as fast as the leaders. In fact when Meira logged the fastest lap
of the race, it was when he was chasing A.J. IV. A.J. IV ran 209 and
Meira used the draft (and his Honda power) to run 210 mph.
Our second pit stop is when our ‘first top-10' turned into a ‘let's
just get what we can' finish. The stop went smoothly enough but when
the car was let down, the air jack guy didn't release the hose from
the car. Well, once the car hits the ground that is the signal to the
driver to go. I was shouting ‘Go' and he went--with the air hose still
attached.
I should have told him to stop and we could have pulled him back but I
figured we were going to get a penalty anyway, so I told him to hurry
back to the pits which he did. I found out later that if we had pulled
him back and fixed it right then, we wouldn't have gotten the
10-second pit box penalty. The rules change and sometimes it's hard to
keep up with the interpretations. Live and learn. In fact we were in
there even longer than 10 seconds because some pieces got stuck in the
hole that had to be removed so we wouldn't have a problem on the next
stop.
As luck would have it (and lately all we seem to be getting is bad
luck), it all happened under green. So we lost at least four laps. At
times the scoring monitor read five but that depended on where you
were in the pit stop cycle.
Since we finished just three laps down, I think that tells how hard
and how well A.J. IV was running. We had just one more yellow flag
with 25 laps to go. The caution lasted 11 laps. With 15 laps left, he
passed seventh place car Helio Castroneves, the top-finishing
Toyota-powered car. He had actually run him down and was about to pass
him when the yellow came out |
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