The Indy 500...We're Back


By A.J. Foyt


This year’s Indianapolis 500 contained all of the elements that make this race the greatest one in the world. It had great driving (Scott Dixon was the class of the field), it had suspense (would the outraged Danica Patrick actually pop Ryan Briscoe?), and it had plenty of crashes (with 13 rookies that wasn’t surprising but having veteran drivers and teams mess up, was).


But most of all, it had people. Lots of them. There were people everywhere. It didn’t matter to them that gas cost about $4 a gallon (when I started driving there in 1958, it cost 24 cents!).


With windy, cold, wet weather being the norm all month, the sunny, warm weather on race day forced race teams to guesstimate on their set-ups. Some nailed it, some didn’t.


Scott Dixon’s team did. Dixon drove a flawless race to win his first Indy 500 and he did it from the pole—something I never did. Congratulations to Chip Ganassi and his team.


It took us most of the month to find the sweet spots in our No. 14 and 41 ABC Supply Dallara/Hondas. Our chief engineer Mike Colliver worked closely with our drivers Darren Manning and Jeff Simmons and myself. It became frustrating at times but it all came together on race day.


Darren started 14th in the 14 and Jeff started 24th in the 41. We were having a good race with both of our cars. Just past lap 30 they were running 9th and 13th. Then the yellow came out for Graham Rahal’s accident, and the pitstops started.


So did the trouble.


Rookie Alex Lloyd dove into his pit from the outside lane and he made contact with Jeff who was leaving his pit box. Jeff needed a new front wing. We made it as close to the other as we could but it wasn’t the same race car after that.


Darren was running strong and had moved into the top 10 with a good stop. By the time of his second pitstop, he was running sixth comfortably.


His stop went fine, but my son Larry Foyt (who was calling Darren’s race) told him it would be close with the cars pitting around him. As Darren was leaving, Larry yelled to him to stop but Darren thought he could make it past Alex Lloyd (him again!) and Darren did. But he didn’t make it past Buddy Rice turning into his pit and the right front endplate came flying off the 14.


We’d used Darren’s spare nose for Jeff so Craig Baranouski got one from my grandson A.J. IV’s team. It worked pretty good even though Mike had to compensate for a very different configuration of the endplates. A.J. IV, who was 24 on race day, had his own problems with a pit fire on his first stop, luckily he didn’t get hurt. That boy has had a really tough month.


Darren dropped back to 24th – he was back in Jeff’s neighborhood now becase we couldn’t get the loose feeling out of Jeff’s car. He drifted back even further on the next stint. Getting ready for another restart on lap 112, Jeff lit up the tires and the rear broke loose; the car veered into the outside wall and then into the inside wall. He thought he hit the gas too hard but it should have made it go left with the stagger in the car so we’re checking the data. He felt terrible but I was glad he didn’t get hurt. The car was another matter--it hit harder than I thought.


At least Darren was happy with his car. He battled back up to ninth making some good restarts and passing cars down the front straight—where the ABC Supply guests could appreciate it from their suite. He might have gotten Buddy Rice for eighth but the tire sensors showed Darren had a left rear tire going down--probably from something he picked up on the track. With cars crashing like they were, there is always some debris on the track. He was lucky that the race didn’t go another four or five laps.


My son Larry did a great job calling Darren’s race. So far he has two top-10 finishes in two races (he called the Japan race too). He and Mike seem to work well with Darren and that is working for our team.


It’s been a while since I’ve been happy with a top-10 finish at the Indianapolis 500 but this year I was, especially considering the problems we had. We worked through them as a team and we’re stronger for it.

I think it’s fair to say that the Indy 500 is back and so are we.