Mid-Ohio
By A.J. Foyt


Once again, we had a good race in the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio with the ABC Supply team. We finished eighth, putting up another top-10 finish--our third straight this season--and our second straight top-10 at the track itself. And we moved up another position in the points to 13th.


Since we had David Luck, the president and ceo of ABC Supply, in our pitbox, we were glad to get another top-10. When the executives from ABC find time in their busy schedules to attend a race, we want to do better than well. We fell a little short of that goal but it wasn’t for lack of trying.


Going into the race Sunday, I wasn’t sure how it would turn out because we didn’t qualify very good—we were starting 21st. Mid-Ohio is a tight, twisty track where there isn’t a lot of passing so track position is very important. Starting 21st, we didn’t have good track position, so before the race, we talked about how we were going to get it.


The Sunday morning rain storm helped. The fact that it came after our morning practice where we had sorted out our qualifying problems also helped. We knew that the rain would be gone soon, and it was for our race, but the start was deemed a ‘rain tire’ start by the Indycar Series officials because of the wet track conditions. The Firestone rain tires have grooves in them which help disperse the water and they are a softer compound which makes them good in the rain but they get used up very quickly on a dry track.


Darren Manning, an Englishman who grew up racing in the rain, assessed the track on the parade laps and let us know that it was dry enough for him to manage on the slick tires. He had to take the green flag on ‘wets’ (per the rule) but he could pit immediately for slick tires which have no grooves and a harder compound; they last a lot longer on dry pavement.


We pitted and so did Vitor Meira (who started 11th) and by lap six – which is when everyone had finally pitted – we were running second behind Meira.


We had great track position!


If the yellow hadn’t come out a couple laps later, and if the race had stayed green through the first round of pitstops, then the little bobble we had on our first stop wouldn’t have cost us any positions. But that’s not what happened.


The field bunched up behind us during the full course yellow on lap nine and Manning ran in second well ahead of Will Power until our pitstop on lap 27 when there was another full course yellow. We had a slow tire change which cost us a couple of seconds and three positions.


We came out in 10th and were soon up to 7th (some teams were on a different fuel strategy). Darren began saving fuel as it was apparent we might make the race on just one more stop. He ended up pitting when our fuel window opened up on lap 55. That stop was a good one because we came out ahead of Tony Kanaan who’d been behind Darren since the last stop.


Kanaan kept the pressure on Darren. He got by when our car pushed a bit and Darren had to burp the throttle. Darren said the car wasn’t quite as good at the end of a fuel stint. Darren stayed behind Kanaan the rest of the way.


Team Penske won the race with Ryan Briscoe outrunning pole winner Helio Castroneves. They were followed by Scott Dixon, Will Power, Oriol Servia and Meira.


For my ABC Supply team, it was a good finish to the weekend. Last year we finished sixth in this race, but this year the race was a lot more competitive so our eighth place was actually a stronger performance. Our team is working better and Darren is driving better and it’s starting to show.


We go to a brand new track (for us) this week when we travel to Edmonton City Centre in western Canada. It’s a street circuit that the Champ Car guys ran for the last three years so they will have the advantage on the old IndyCar Series regulars. I’m not too worried because Darren has proven he can adapt quickly and I believe we’ll give them all a run for the money.


The race will be on Saturday afternoon and will be televised on ESPN starting at 5 pm ET. I hope you’ll tune in.