Nashville
By A.J. Foyt


The Firestone Indy 200 race at Nashville Superspeedway Saturday night was one of the best races that our ABC Supply team had all year and this is why.


• Darren Manning drove one of the best oval track races I’ve seen him run in the No. 14 ABC Supply Dallara/Honda. He was aggressive when he needed to be and patient when he had to be. He drove another smart race to finish ninth after starting 18th.


• My crew overcame a mechanical problem that popped up 30 minutes before the race with some creative engineering involving a bungee cord, a drill and some pop rivets.


• We made the right call on pit stop strategy which insured a top-10 finish, even though the Sunday morning quarterbacks may think differently.


The mechanical problem occurred when the crew did their pre-race check of the pit equipment. The car’s airjack return spring broke which meant the jack itself wouldn’t retract (that’s how it gets back onto all four wheels).


That was the first time that ever happened to us and this airjack had only three races on it. With just 20 minutes before the green flag was set to wave, we didn’t have time to replace it (it involves pulling out the gearbox), so we figured out how to mount a piece of bungee cord which would stretch when the car was in the air and would tighten when the airjack was released, forcing the cylinder back up into the bottom of the car.


Team manager Craig Baranouski, mechanic Wade Crews and data engineer Buddy Blackburn made the temporary repair. We didn’t know if it would last the whole race so they were prepared to use the quick jack (the wheeled jack that they use to turn/move the car when it isn’t under power).


When the race started, Darren got a great start, going from 18th to 14th in one lap, which was the best start I’ve seen him make in the No. 14. He gained a couple more positions when Marco Andretti lost control and collected Ryan Briscoe, who, for the second straight week, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.


After that mess was cleared up, the race restarted and stayed green through the first round of pitstops.

Our ‘fix’ held and by lap 71, Darren had moved into 10th.
He pitted again when Ryan Hunter-Reay crashed after getting too high and sliding into the marbles and then the wall. Our ‘fix’ held again on the stop and we went in and out of the pits in eighth place.


Then the rain came on lap 137, the caution came out on lap 139 and lasted until lap 151. We (my son Larry and our chief engineer Mike Colliver) talked about staying out but when Mike ran the numbers, we would have had to pit again under green about 15 laps later. There were too many laps left in the race to use the same set of tires—that would have been asking about 100 laps on one set. That’s too much to ask of the Firestones, especially on an abrasive concrete track like Nashville.


When race control announced that the pits were open, we had about 15 seconds to make a decision, so we followed the leaders in. It was on that stop that the “fix’ failed, so if we’d had to pit under green, it would have been a disaster for us. The crew reacted quickly and although we lost a spot to Buddy Rice, we became the last car on the lead lap so we didn’t lose any more.


Coulda, woulda, shoulda. I can hear the Sunday morning quarterbacks who’d say that we should have stayed out on that caution for moisture on lap 139 because when the yellow for rain came again on lap 166, we could have finished third behind Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon. But we knew we wouldn’t have made it fuel-wise. We would have had to pit on lap 166 and then the pits were closed. We may have eked out a couple laps under yellow but we’d never have made it to the red flag that waved on lap 170 when ‘the track was lost’ to the heavier rain.


We just weren’t getting the fuel mileage that Dixon and his teammate got. On the first round of green flag pit stops, they pitted two laps after we had to come in. So if we had gambled, we would have gone from a sure top-10 to a 16th or maybe worse and turned a pretty good evening into one of regrets.


And if the rain had held off for two more minutes, we’d have finished seventh instead of ninth and Dixon and Wheldon would be saying if only.


We made the smart decision and it paid off with another top-10 finish. It was also our second straight top-10 finish at this track because last year we finished ninth after starting 17th. At that time, I thought it was our best oval race of the season too.


This week we head to Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio. It will be televised live on ABC-TV starting at 1:30 eastern time. We hope you tune in for what we hope is another strong performance by the ABC Supply team.