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Miami
By A.J. Foyt
 It's
been a long off-season so my ABC Supply team was anxious to go
racing. With new driver Felipe Giaffone, a new Honda engine, and
some new crew members, I was a little nervous about things going
smoothly. Fortunately they did and we got off to a good start in the
Toyota Indy 300 IndyCar Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway
Sunday afternoon.
We never really got a good run in the draft in practice because we
were focusing on a qualifying set-up. So our times were near the
bottom of the grid. When we qualified tenth our first time out with
all the new elements, I think people were surprised. I like to
surprise people.
 We
were hampered a little bit because we didn't get a chance to run our
race set-up when final practice was cancelled. The set-up we had on
the car turned out to be a little too low. In the beginning, Felipe
was bottoming out which was thrilling him because it made the back
end dance around. I told him to hold on until the pitstop when I
could make some changes.
He held on pretty good because he was running seventh when he pitted
under green. Some cars pitted earlier so when we came out in 11th, I
wasn't worried because we were out of sequence with some of the
cars. He liked the car better and said don't make any more changes
to it. He got back to eighth by our next green flag stop just after
halfway. As luck would have it, the yellow came out immediately
after and we went two laps down.
We regained a lap with the IRL wave-around but we were still a lap
down. We climbed back to eighth by the time of our next stop but
once again, the yellow came out after we pitted. I couldn't believe
it. This time we were two laps down even with the wave-around. We
were on the same lap as Scott Sharp and Kosuke Matsuura. I thought
we'd get them on the restart but Felipe got out of shape (rubber
build-up on his tires) and he lost seven-tenths of a second as he
gathered it back up. He lost the draft and had to work his way back
to the pack-not easy to do at a mile and half long speedway. He
closed in on Sharp but ran out of laps and finished eighth. Still it
was a good showing for us.
We had clean pitstops-all of them under green flag conditions which
makes it that much more critical. Four of our guys over the wall
were in new positions and two of them had never even been to an Indy
car race, much less worked a pit stop. I was really pleased with my
crew's performance.
Working with Felipe went well even though we have a little trouble
understanding each other since he's from Brazil and I'm from Texas.
Our spotter Larry Arnold (who's from Indiana) helps interpret for
both of us.
We were competitive and with the top executives there from ABC
Supply, we showed them that we can be competitive now that
everyone's horsepower is fairly close. But they also saw the other
the other side of the sport.
Racing is a dangerous sport and we were reminded of that on race
morning during our final practice .A spin by Ed Carpenter in turn
two just three laps into the session turned into a tragedy when
rookie Paul Dana struck the rear end of Carpenter's car at over 175
mph. The impact sheared off the gearbox on Carpenter's car, sent
Dana's car airborne before it crashed hard onto the backstretch.
Dana died of his injuries two hours later. He was 30 years old.
The day before Dana talked about living his dream--being an Indy Car
driver. He worked hard to get to this level, suffered an injury last
year and had to sit out the season. But he came back to race this
year more excited than ever.
I hope his family can take comfort in that. It's hard for people who
have never driven a race car to understand. Fans can appreciate it,
crew members may think they know but when it comes down to it, only
fellow drivers really understand the feeling that racing an Indy car
gives you.
Lord knows I've come close to being killed several times in my
career, (one time I was even pronounced dead at Riverside,
California in a stock car race-lucky for me Parnelli Jones saw me
move). Every time I recovered, I got back in the cockpit. Why? There
is no other feeling that can compare to racing cars. I loved it.
Drivers were pretty quiet around the paddock. Some knew Dana better
than others but they all had that same feeling that it could happen
to me. You rationalize why it wouldn't happen to you, thinking your
own level of experience would help you avoid the costly mistakes
that could kill you. But sometimes it happens, no matter how
experienced you are. Look at Dale Earnhardt whose accident didn't
look bad enough to even cause a bad headache. But he died. Then
there's Mario Andretti who flew through the air at Indy a couple
years ago and walked away.
I'm pretty fatalistic that way. Heck, one of the closest times I
ever had was last summer when the killer bees attacked me on a
bulldozer in a field. When your time is up, it's up buddy and
there's not a thing you can do about it.
The best you can hope for is that when your time comes, you have no
regrets. I didn't know Dana but hopefully those who did will be able
to say that about him.
We race again this weekend at the Honda Grand Prix of St.
Petersburg. I hope if you can't be there in person, you'll tune in
to watch on ESPN at 3:30 p.m. eastern time.
On behalf of my race team, I extend my deepest sympathies to Paul
Dana's family and the entire Rahal-Letterman team on their loss, a
loss which affects us all. God bless. |
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