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Michigan
By A.J. Foyt
 The
Firestone Indy 400 at Michigan International Speedway was another exercise in
frustration for our team. The ABC Supply car was set up fine but we didn't have
the horsepower we needed to be competitive on the 2-mile banked oval. It's been
pretty much the same story for the last two years on the superspeedways.
It's getting harder and harder to take, especially when you consider three of
the final six races of the season are on superspeedways.
We didn't qualify well--21st--despite the fact that A.J. Foyt IV got everything
he could out of his No. 14 Dallara/Toyota. When the green flag dropped on race
day, he got a good start at first and then dropped to last. But that was only
for a lap because with the cars running two and three abreast, he hooked up in
the draft and could run inside and outside. He moved from 23rd to 15th in just
13 laps.
Then the pack began to string out and that's when the horsepower (or lack of it)
came into play. No longer able to take advantage of the draft of the Hondas in
front of him, he began to slow and the Hondas that he'd passed earlier just
motored on by him one at a time.
 We
went down a lap on lap 48 because the race was running under green flag all that
time and clearly pole winner Bryan Herta's Honda was superior to everyone
else's. Running so far ahead of the field, he was making it a very boring race
for the fans. We went down another lap just after halfway.
Then the engines started blowing up (three Toyotas and one Honda) one at a time
and the yellow flags came out so we got a chance to catch up to the field. That
attrition and a four-car crash triggered by Townsend Bell (driving for the
injured Tomas Enge) on lap 181 helped us to get our second best finish of the
season--12th--for the No. 14 ABC Supply car. It's been a very long season.
Bryan Herta did win the race. Dan Wheldon, Tomas Scheckter, Tony Kanaan and Sam
Hornish took second through fifth.
Normally I go to Indy this week for the Brickyard 400. Well, since I don't have
a car entered for the race, I'm going to take the weekend off. My son Larry Foyt
and grandson A.J. IV will both be there though. Larry is working on a
NASCAR-related deal for next year.
A.J. IV is just hanging out. There are some tentative plans for him to run some
Busch races for Ray Evernham later this season as long as the races don't
conflict with the IndyCar races. And maybe he wants to be around the stock car
gang when he makes his movie debut in "The Dukes of Hazzard," which opens this
Friday, August 5.
He has a cameo role in the movie. He throws a punch and then gets beat on the
back with a pool stick by ‘Daisy Duke' played by Jessica Simpson. What people
don't know is that the first stick was a breakaway stick but that when they did
more takes of the scene she had to use a real stick which didn't break easily.
When she started raising some welts, he finally said something. They all
apologized because they didn't realize how much it was hurting. I guess she can
pack a pretty good wallop if the role calls for it. Anyway, he had a good time.
Since the last movie I saw in the theater was the first Godfather movie, I'll
wait for this movie to come out on video.
Our next race is at the 1.5-mile Kentucky Speedway, another horsepower track.
The Amber Alert Portal Indy 300 will be televised live by ABC on Sunday, August
14 starting at 3:30 pm eastern time. |
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