Texas
By A.J. FOYT
I love racing in my home state. I always did, even when we were racing at the old Texas World Speedway in College Station. Now we race at Texas Motor Speedway, a beautiful 1.5 mile facility north of Fort Worth.
My regular driver Eliseo Salazar qualified ninth in the Harrah's No. 14 and Donnie Beechler, who drove for me at Indy, qualified sixth in the No. 11. I wanted to give Donnie another shot because he impressed me at Indy.
Unfortunately, we weren't much of a factor in the Texas 500km Saturday night even though I had two cars starting in the top 10. Basically, I missed on the set-up of the Harrah's Dallara/Olds cars. But we were able to improve the cars' handling a little bit during the pitstops.
Pitstops. That was a story in itself. Because I ran Beechler out of my own pocket, I put together a makeshift pit crew for the times we pitted under caution. We planned to use our regular Harrah's crew on both cars for the green flag pitstops since the cars would come into the pits separately.
As it turned out, all the stops were made during the yellow flag periods so my rookie crew got plenty of action. It included my grandson A.J. Foyt IV who changed the left front tire. He's racing go-karts and F-2000 cars but he wants to be in Indy cars someday. So he's been practicing with the regular crew at the race shop for the last six months. But as he found out, it's a lot different during a race. My team manager Craig Baranouski, who retired from the over-the-wall gang several years ago, was back changing the right front tire. I had Cody Zobac (who is experienced) on the right rear tire and rookies Todd Krueger on the left rear tire and Rodney Klausmeyer as the fueler. They did good. They aren't rookies anymore.
My drivers also did a good job. Beechler finished fifth (he was later put back to sixth for jumping a position on a restart) and Salazar finished seventh. He's still second in the points. Their cars weren't perfect but they never gave up and they used their heads.
Despite the problems with our cars, the race was exciting. Scott Sharp won the race, which finished under the yellow flag because of an accident with four laps to go. Sharp, Greg Ray and Eddie Cheever were battling for the lead when Ray dove low under the slower car of Robbie McGehee coming off turn two. McGehee also went low to get out of the way of the leaders. The resulting collision with Ray sent McGehee across the track into the path of Cheever, who T-boned McGehee.
Ray and Cheever were out of the race and McGehee was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas with a broken lower left leg.
As I said, the race ended under caution. Sharp was followed across the line by Sam Hornish Jr., Felipe Giaffone, Buddy Lazier and Beechler. Hornish was dropped to third after officials determined he passed Giaffone under yellow.
On a final note, I hope things turn out okay for Davey Hamilton who had a pretty bad accident on lap 73. Jeret Schroeder's engine blew and he spun in front of Davey. With nowhere to go, Davey got caught between Schroeder's car and the wall. The impact sheared off the rear and front ends of Davey's car. His feet and legs were badly broken and he is currently in Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. Davey used to drive for me when the IRL was first started and we have remained good friends. Anyone who knows him will tell you that he is one of the nicest guys in our sport. He's got a tough road ahead of him but he is one determined guy. And I know he'll have a helluva lot of people pulling for him.
You can bet that I will.
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