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Richmond
By A.J. Foyt
 A
record crowd, record speeds and the fifth different winner in as many
years describes the SunTrust Indy Challenge at Richmond International
Raceway in Virginia Saturday night.
I always thought that once the race fans who became fans because of
NASCAR saw the Indy cars fly around the small, high-banked oval at lap
speeds over 170 mph (pole speed was over 176!) they would become
hooked. The crowd for Saturday night was estimated to be over 55,000
(small by Nextel Cup standards but almost double the size of our first
IRL race here in the heart of NASCAR country). I'm sure the IRL can
give Danica Patrick some credit for bringing new fans out to the
track. They may come out of curiosity but they'll be back because the
racing is a thrill a minute.
 It
was thrilling for my team early in the race when my grandson A.J. IV,
who started 17th, spun on the backstretch on lap six. He was lucky--he
didn't hit anything which, on a track as small and fast as Richmond,
is not an easy thing to do. In fact, I don't think I've ever spun a
race car and not hit something.
Unfortunately for A.J. IV, he had to be pretty cautious the rest of
the evening. We missed on the race set-up and it showed. Now we've had
problems in qualifying here but we always had a pretty good race
set-up. But Saturday night he complained that the car was too loose
off the turns for him to get on the throttle when he needed to. We've
been suffering with a lack of horsepower but this is one track where
horsepower is not that big a deal and Toyotas finishing in three of
the top six positions proves that. We missed out on one of our best
chances to do well this year and that bugs the heck out of me.
On the pitstops, we made some front wing changes and adjusted air
pressure in the tires but we couldn't do enough to make A.J. IV really
comfortable in the No. 14. It surprised me because we'd had a pretty
good final practice; A.J. IV was happy with the car. Then I put even
more downforce in the car to compensate for what would be a hot slick
track on race night but it wasn't enough.
A.J. IV just couldn't run as hard as he needed to, so our strategy
changed to one of survival. Well that's always the strategy but this
one had a capital S on it.
One of the problems with getting down early at a small track like
Richmond (it's only three-quarters of a mile long) is that you start
pulling out of the way for the faster cars and before you know it,
it's hard to get into a rhythm or stay out of the junky part of the
track. It all affects how you run, which compounds your problems,
making a long night even longer.
So even though I wasn't too happy with the high line A.J. IV was
running, I know he did a good job to bring the ABC Supply car home in
one piece. There were eight other drivers who didn't--some because of
their mistakes or because they became victims of others' mistakes.
We finished 14th. Helio Castroneves won the race and he had some luck
too because he narrowly missed getting caught up in the accident of
Darren Manning and Roger Yasukawa just nine laps from the finish. But
when things are going your way as they were for Helio that night, you
seem invulnerable.
We head to Kansas this week. The team is staying in Indy to prepare
the ABC Supply Dallara/Toyota. They should have a light week since we
were able to roll our car onto the trailer after the 250-lapper. That
is a good feeling, no matter where you finish.
We've had a good set-up at Kansas but it's been three years since we
won there in 2002 with Airton Dare. We don't have the outright
horsepower to win on this 1.5-mile superspeedway where you run flat
out all the way around. But right now I'd take a top five finish. We
need to turn this season around and there is no place better to do it
than where A.J. IV won his first ever Infiniti Pro Series race, the
same day that Dare won his first IRL IndyCar race.
Tune in this Sunday afternoon, July 3rd at 1:30pm eastern time on ESPN |
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