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Kansas City: Good Memories Then and Now
By A.J. Foyt
The Indy Racing League had a great weekend at the new Kansas Speedway, an impressive new 1.5-mile track on the outskirts of Kansas City. The grandstands were packed even though the weather was really hot! The fans got to see a great race and I'm sure they will remember it for years to come.
I have good memories of Kansas City because it was where I won my first USAC midget feature way back in 1956. I won the 100-lapper at Olympic Stadium, a quarter-mile dirt track.
The Harrah's Racing team had a pretty good weekend too. Both cars led the race,
 which was pretty good since it was sponsored by a rival casino in Kansas City (whose name I won't mention). Both cars finished in the top-10, something we hadn't done since Texas. Eliseo Salazar is now tied for third place in the driver standings with Felipe
Giaffone.
Donnie Beechler ran a great race in the Harrah's no. 11 car. He qualified 11th and came up through the pack to lead the race. He stayed near the front and finished third behind Eddie Cheever and Sam Hornish who swapped the lead as late as three laps to go! The fans went nuts.
It was Donnie's best finish with us and I was proud of the way he ran and the way his team performed. He didn't win but he ran hard and the crew really worked together.
I had hired Donnie at Indy, and after he ran so well for me there, I kept him going on a race by race deal. I am running him out of my own pocket because I believe he has talent. I don't have a major sponsor for a second team but we are looking. Until we find one, I'll run him under the Harrah's name because they've been a good company to work with.
That said, Donnie had been running pretty cautiously in the last two races because he was so concerned about wrecking a car. Well, he figured out on his own that he was probably being too cautious and told himself that he had to go back to driving the way he knew how -- hard. He knew that was why I hired him in the first place. He's a smart guy. Now, I don 't want him to take stupid chances but we're not there just to ride around either. We're still learning how to communicate about car set-ups and driving styles. We're making progress.
Take qualifying for instance. We talked after his qualifying run because he ran it flat out and still ran only 11th. He had the same set-up as Eliseo who qualified third, which, by the way, was his best start of the year. In looking at the computer (yes, I must admit that computers can be helpful now and then), I saw that Donnie had been entering the turn earlier than Eliseo. By explaining this to him and showing him that the car couldn't run as free as it needed to, he understood he had to change his line. In the final practice he was third quickest. Donnie is a quick learner.
Eliseo took the lead from pole sitter Eddie Cheever at the start and led the first 32 laps. In fact, at one point I radioed to him to slow down because we were a little concerned about the tire wear. The weather was really hot -- 99 degrees, which made the track temperature even hotter (around 140 degrees). Tires blister real easy in conditions like that but we had a set-up that seemed to work pretty good and we were monitoring the tires and the air pressures closely. Luckily, even when the tires did blister, we were able to keep running on them without having to pit earlier than we wanted. But I told both my drivers that if the car suddenly got real loose, that they should pit that lap because there wouldn't be much warning before a tire blew. But the Firestone tires held up well and we didn't have any problems.
Eliseo ran in the top three until the first round of pitstops when everything gets
shuffled. He faded from the top-five midway through the race. He said that the car picked up a big push in traffic. But he was able to stay in the top-10 and came home with his sixth top-10 finish in eight races.
Although Eliseo was fading, Donnie was picking up steam. I thought he might have enough for the win but when he got up close to those guys, he just didn't have anything for them. So we'll be happy with third and work on improving the performance for the next race.
Our next stop is Nashville Speedway in Tennessee for the Harrah's 200 which will be run July 21st, Saturday night under the lights. Now that's a race where we really want to shine. I know that Eliseo and Donnie both want to take that Harrah's trophy home. Me? I'd be happy with a one-two finish.
As for Kansas, after I won there in 1956, my career really took off. The next season I got a champ car ride and the year after that I was racing in the Indy 500. So when I think about Kansas City it is always with pleasure. And after this weekend, that hasn't changed.
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