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Brickyard 400
by A.J. Foyt
 Brickyard
400 week was a busy week for me and my Team Conseco at
Indianapolis. The week began with an Employee Day on Tuesday
(July 31) at Conseco's headquarters in Carmel, just north of
Indy.
Conseco had an outdoor display with the
race car, the merchandise trailer (where employees could buy
souvenirs), the activation tent, which is something that is
set up at the races for fans to find out about Conseco's
financial services in a fun way. Conseco also brought in one
of their sponsored bass fishing boats. They had a
professional angler there to talk about fishing. The
weather was clear but very hot. In fact a few clouds would
have been nice.
Ron Hornaday and I signed autographs for
about three hours. Conseco has 3,000 employees there and I
think they said 2,100 of them showed up. The management was
thrilled with the turnout.
I had dinner that night with my old
driver Kenny Brack, who won Indy in '99 driving for me.
Kenny had won the Indy Racing League title the year
before that. He's leading the points in that Other Series
(CART).
We talked about a lot of different
things. It was pretty funny because he had a big steak! In
fact, he treated me to dinner at Morton's Steakhouse.
When he drove for me he was always eating chicken and trying
to get me to do the same (it didn't work). But the next day
we had breakfast at the Brickyard Motel restaurant
there and he saw me with cornflakes and strawberries. He was
shocked because I used to just have ham/cheese omelettes. So I
guess we are influencing each other a little bit.
The next night I was on rpm 2night (the
motorsports tv show) with Robin Miller. We had a great time
cutting up with each other. He said it was the 20th
anniversary of when I tried to strangle him – he used to be
a reporter with the Indianapolis Star newspaper and every now
and then Robin would write some things that weren't true and
I was fed up with him. By the way, I didn't really try to
strangle him, because if I did, he wouldn't be around to
talk about it.
I saw Robin later in the week and he told
me about 300 people came up to him and said the show was great
and they just wished it went on longer. Robin exaggerates now
and then, it was probably only about 200 people.
You wouldn't know it but I was actually
in town for the race, the Brickyard 400. We finally got down
to racing on Friday with a one hour practice. We were not very
good, 45th in fact. We had tested the week before
and ran real good but then NASCAR told us at Pocono (just
before qualifying too) that we couldn't run the shocks we
had been running the last couple weeks. It was a crummy deal.
We made the show at Pocono but we had to start from ground
zero at Indy.
When we were 42nd in the
morning practice before qualifying and had a late draw (we
went out 50th of 53 cars and the track was at least
30 degrees hotter and slower), I really started getting
nervous. We didn't have a provisional so we had to make it
into the show on speed, which meant top 36.
I talked it over with my crew chief
Donnie Brown and shock man Skip Eyler and we came up with
another combination. Ron did a helluva job in qualifying
because he really didn't know what to expect but he pulled
it off. He qualified 28th, right next to Jeff
Gordon, who eventually won the race. Too bad we didn't stay
next to him the whole time.
During Happy Hour, Jay Leno came over
with the folks from General Motors (Leno was the celebrity
pace car driver at the race) to see if he could do a skit
with our team. We said yes but we were in the middle of Happy
Hour. We worked around it – Jay hung out in the hot garage
for about an hour and we got it done. It's supposed to air
one night this week but they weren't sure which night. I'm
glad his show comes on late at night though.
Saturday night we had a commitment to go
to Conseco headquarters again. One of their business units was
having a pre-race party. Believe me, it was a lot easier to go
knowing we were in the race. Ron and I met a lot of nice
people and I saw some people that I had met before.
The race didn't turn out as good as we
expected. We started off pretty good. There was a big wreck on
the backstretch and Ron made it through (picked up 8 spots).
But something got damaged because the handling was messed up
in the left front after that. We pitted a little early to try
to fix it and that proved to be a problem later on. We ended
up getting out of sync with the leaders, lost track position
and got caught with a yellow coming out right after we pitted.
We finished 34th, which leaves a lot of room
for improvement.
Looking at the bright side, we did get
the car handling good with the changes we made during the
race, so at least we're headed in the right direction. And
really, sometimes the gamble we took Sunday pays off, but it
was still a gamble. I think we can get better at race
strategy, there's always room for improvement there too.
I see our team improving all the time but
for whatever reason, it doesn't show in the performance just
yet. But I'll tell you this, when we do win, it will be a
shock to everyone.
Everyone but us.
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