Mid-Ohio
By A.J. Foyt


This past weekend at Mid-Ohio, everything went smooth for me and my ABC Supply team but it sure didn’t start out that way.


We were flying to the track in our jet Friday morning (most of the team stayed over and drove up from Kentucky on Thursday) when we got to about 25,000 feet and we felt a hesitation in one of the motors. After the second time, I went up to the cockpit and asked the pilots what was going on. They were trying to figure it out and after about 10 minutes, I decided to head back to Houston Hobby Airport to get it checked out.


They ran a diagnostics test on the computer that supplies the fuel to the right engine and everything read fine. The technician said it might not happen again. So we got back in the plane (my son Larry thought this was a new definition of insanity) and decided if it happened again, the pilots could fly it manually. It happened again but I told them to shut off the computer and maybe it would reset. They did that and it didn’t happen again until an hour into the two-and-a-half hour flight. Then they decided to fly it manually the rest of the way. We made it to Mansfield just fine but my passengers (including my son and our engineer Adam Schaechter) were a little nervous, but so was I.


We got to the track in time for practice that afternoon and the car’s set-up was in the ballpark. Ryan Hunter-Reay wound up 13th. We had another practice the Saturday morning and he was 10th after that one, so we figured we had a chance to make it past the first round of qualifying which we did (for only the second time this year).


In the second round Ryan was running good and was sitting in the Firestone Fast Six when he got popped out in the last minute by Helio Castroneves. Ryan ended up seventh—which is still our best start this year.


The Honda Indy 200 race was a hard race. The weather was hot with the temperatures in the 90s. Ryan ran a real good race while several veterans of the series made mistakes and spun off. It was fortunate for us because we gained a couple of positions. We didn’t really make mistakes. The ABC Supply pit crew had good pit stops both times under green so we maintained our position on the track. We stuck to the same fuel strategy as the leaders since we were running with them and nothing crazy happened with the yellows so it didn’t bite us. That was nice for a change.


Ryan drove a hard race, especially in the final fuel stint when Hideki Mutoh started pressing him with all he had. Ryan had moved into fourth with 10 laps to go and that’s when I started talking to him every lap, just trying to keep him focused. He was running on the harder primary (black) tires and Mutoh was running the softer alternate (red-rimmed) tires which made Mutoh faster. Ryan had a difficult job in that situation.


We were out of the softer (read faster) red-rimmed tires because we went the extra qualifying round. I could have put on a set of used reds but I figured he ran good with the black primaries and I had another new set of them. I was worried that the heat cycle on the used red tires (which happens when they get hot from running and then cool down) might not agree with the No. 14’s set-up. We’d had too good a weekend to gamble now.


It meant that Ryan had to work harder to keep Mutoh behind. They both ran hard because they were closing in on third place finisher Dario Franchitti at the end. Ryan finished fourth to give us our first top-five of the season!


When the race was over, he pulled down pit lane near victory lane. By the time I got to him he was out of the car and sitting on the wall, drinking water and giving interviews. He was soaking wet with sweat. He probably lost five or six pounds, maybe more.


I told him he did a real good job and he thanked me for reminding him about using the push-to-pass button in those closing laps. It’s a new ‘tool’ for the drivers and sometimes they need to be reminded especially in the heat of battle.


Making it all the sweeter is the fact that David Luck, CEO of ABC Supply, came to the race and saw us run well in person. Not to mention the 600 ABC Supply guests in the hospitality tent across from the start finish line. We had a lot of people cheering for us.


We flew home after the race without using the computer and made it safely back to Texas. My crew was pretty cool about it. The pilots took the plane in Monday and the mechanics figured it was a sensor that was giving a false signal to the computer supplying the fuel to the engine, causing it to shut down. They replaced it so it shouldn’t be a problem. For the record, the jet can fly on one engine but I hope we never have to test it.


Speaking of testing, we head out to California Wednesday (Aug. 12) for a one day test at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma on Thursday. We don’t seem to run very good there so hopefully we will come away with a better baseline set-up for the race than we have had in the past.


We’re going to leave the ABC Supply transporter (and race cars) there because we race on the 2.3-mile road course the next weekend. I hope you’ll tune in to the VERSUS channel which will broadcast the event live Sunday, August 23rd starting at 5 p.m. EDT.