Race Report: Honda Indy Toronto


TORONTO July 12, 2009—Toss that monkey aside! Ryan Hunter-Reay and A.J. Foyt’s ABC Supply team finished seventh for their best finish together since Hunter-Reay began driving for Foyt four races ago. It was the Foyt team’s best finish of the season to date which has been the toughest the team’s had in several years.


"I'm happy for these guys to be able to roll the ABC car back in the truck and it's nice not having anyone run into us on the first lap. We got going good early and we had a good car and then we got caught out on a full course yellow with our pit strategy. We had been running 5th and then we were 16th but we were able to work our way back up and get a top ten, thanks in part to good clean pit stops. So it's a big positive for the ABC Supply team. Maybe we finally got that monkey off our back."


Starting 12th, Hunter-Reay popped into the top-10 on the first lap and moved the ABC Supply Dallara/Honda into ninth by lap two. Six laps later he was eighth when the first yellow came out for Dan Wheldon and Richard Antinucci. The team pitted, going from the softer Firestone red-rimmed alternate tires to the black primary tires.


Since everyone didn’t pit, the No. 14 went from eighth to 14th, but as the pit stops cycled out, he advanced as high as second before having to pit again on lap 46 under green. Prior to that stop, Hunter-Reay asked for help with the car which had developed an understeer. A quick turn of front wing, a tire pressure adjustment and the crew quickly dispatched him in 8.1 seconds. He came out in 11th and moved into the top 10 three laps later.
 

By lap 58, he was eighth when the team told him to the pit for the final stop of fuel on lap 59, after which he’d be able to go the distance. Unfortunately, a full course yellow came out for Ed Carpenter and Graham Rahal’s tangle that same lap and only moments before Hunter-Reay could duck into the pits which nullified the fuel strategy.


He then had to pit with the whole field. Some cars (Ryan Briscoe, Will Power and Paul Tracy) that had pitted three laps before the full course yellow were able to advance to the front of the field when the rest of the field pitted. Hunter-Reay emerged in 13th, but when Tracy and Helio Castroneves crashed on lap 66, he advanced to 11th. He moved into the top 10 when Tony Kanaan made contact with the wall.


With 10 laps to go, the final yellow was brought out by Alex Tagliani’s aggressive driving, resulting in his crashing with Mario Moraes and Tomas Scheckter. Hunter-Reay did a great job avoiding the tangle which he saw building several turns before.


He skirted by to claim seventh. Under the yellow, he reported that he thought the clutch was going and Foyt told him to nurse it home. Apparently, the problem wasn’t as serious as Hunter-Reay thought as he was able to crank off his fastest lap of the race on lap 83 of the 85-lap event.


Dario Franchitti, whose luck took a turn for the better with a well-timed pitstop, won his third race of the season. Second through sixth were Briscoe, Power, Scott Dixon, Justin Wilson and Danica Patrick.


“Ryan drove a great race and the car looked good from where I was spotting,” said Larry Foyt, team director of A.J. Foyt Racing. “His fastest lap was just 1/100th of a second off Dario’s fastest lap so to me that says we had a pretty good car today. And the crew did a great job today too. It was an overall great effort. To be competitive and consistent in practice and then to advance to the second round of qualifying which we hadn’t done in a while and then to run good in the race, all that together made for a good weekend of overall competitiveness which we’ve been lacking lately so hopefully that’s going to get us back on track where we need to be…I guess we’re going to have a monkey on the pit box everywhere we go.”
 

Ryan Hunter-Reay Qualifies 12th at Toronto


TORONTO July 11, 2009—Ryan Hunter-Reay took another step towards throwing the Monkey aside when he drove the No. 14 ABC Supply car to its best starting position of the season with his 12th place qualifying effort in the Honda Indy Toronto today on the street circuit at Exhibition Place.


“All in all it was a pretty good day, we definitely made some gains with the ABC Supply car today,” said Ryan Hunter-Reay afterwards. “We moved on from the first knock-out session which is an accomplishment. In the next session, I think we had a car for the top-10 but I just bottomed the car out going into turn 8 and locked up the fronts and cooked the front tires. I think we could have been 10th and we’re 12th so we can work from there. It’s real tough, the competition is incredibly tight and the track is just so bumpy. There’s a fine line between putting a fast lap in and making a big mistake.”


Hunter-Reay made it through the first session of 12 drivers by posting the sixth fastest speed of 102.308mph with a time of 1:01.75. It was the first time this season that the No. 14 Honda-powered Dallara car made it past the first qualifying group.
 

In the second session, he ran the Firestone red-rimmed alternate tire for the entire session and clocked in at 1:01.96 for a speed of 101.956mph. He had one miscue where he ran off course which he felt affected his ability to break into the top 10. Despite the miscue and having a flat-spotted front tire, he hustled the No. 14 car to pop up into the top nine only to be pipped to 11th in the final five minutes; then Ryan Briscoe posted his best time in the final minute dropping Hunter-Reay to 12th.


ABC Supply Racing team owner A.J. Foyt was pleased with the effort his driver put in, saying, “Ryan did a good job for us today. It’s the farthest up front we’ve started all season so we’re starting to get this program back on track.”


Hunter-Reay will be surrounded by Team Penske when he lines up tomorrow with Helio Castroneves starting directly ahead of him and teammate Briscoe alongside of Hunter-Reay. The top nine qualifiers are: Dario Franchitti, Will Power, Graham Rahal, Justin Wilson, Alex Tagliani, Mike Conway, Robert Doornbos, Scott Dixon and Raphael Matos.


The Honda Indy Toronto will be televised live by ABC-TV starting at 1 pm EDT tomorrow.
 

First Day of Practice in Toronto Goes Well for ABC Supply Team


TORONTO July 10—Ryan Hunter-Reay and the ABC Supply team have one goal this weekend—to get that proverbial Monkey off their collective back!


They made some progress towards doing just that with the first day of practice on the Honda Indy Toronto’s street course here in Exhibition Place. Hunter-Reay’s first practice session saw him 11th out of the 23 cars on track with a speed of 100.820mph (1:02:66).


The ABC Supply team made more progress in the second session where they were seventh quick in mid-session and then slid to 14th quick as teams put on new tires. He clocked a speed of 101.129mph [1:02:47]. Hunter-Reay also went out on new rubber with 11 minutes to go but two full course yellows and traffic combined to prevent him from getting a hot lap in before the session ended.


“It was a pretty good day for us,” said Hunter-Reay after the second practice session. “We put the ABC Supply car in the top-10 constantly all day. We’re not sitting where our performance actually is at the moment –at the end of the day we finished up 14th but that’s because we didn’t get our run on new tires in when everyone else around us did. Hopefully we’ll be able to carry that speed into tomorrow. We kept things simple today and it worked for us. I’m looking forward to tomorrow -- it’s possibly going to be wet. Racing around Toronto in the wet is definitely difficult so it should be an interesting day.”


Tomorrow the team will have a half hour practice session in the morning before qualifying begins at 2 pm. There is a 70% chance of rain tomorrow.

Notes & Quotes: Honda Indy Toronto


• Ryan Hunter-Reay on Toronto: “Toronto is similar to Long Beach and St Petersburg. We have to get the car working out of some of the tight corners and onto the long straights. It’s a fun race track and at the same time you just need to get the car to work right over the rough surfaces. It’s an issue of getting the compliance right on the car with the dampers and springs; we’ll work away at it. It will be my first time back there in four years. That was where I got one of my first Barber Dodge Pro Series victories so I’m looking forward to going back.”


• Ryan Hunter-Reay has visited Toronto and the surrounding area many times in his youth as his mother is a native of Hamilton, Ontario. He spent some holidays there and visited during the summers as well. He still has relatives in the Toronto area.


• A.J. Foyt took a detour to Indianapolis en route to Toronto to do an interview on Wednesday with NASCAR star Tony Stewart for ABC/ESPN ‘s pre-race show on the Brickyard 400. The interview was conducted on the yard of bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Amidst much good-natured ribbing, the two men revealed their deeply held respect for each other. Stewart announced his decision to start his own team in partnership with Haas Racing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series nearly a year ago. He chose the No. 14 for his car in honor of A.J. Foyt’s illustrious history with the number which had been campaigned by the likes of past Indianapolis 500 winners Wilbur Shaw and Bill Vukovich. The last time the No. 14 visited victory lane was ten years ago when Kenny Brack won the Indy 500 driving for Foyt.

• Past performance at Toronto: In the recent past, Ryan Hunter-Reay had three starts in the race here with his best start coming in 2004 driving for Herdez and his best finish coming in 2005 finishing sixth for Rocketsports. The Foyt team started racing at Toronto in 1988 with A.J. Foyt driving the first three years followed by Mike Groff who gave the team its best start of ninth in 1991 (finished eighth). Jon Beekhuis drove for the team in 1992 and Robby Gordon gave the team its best finish of sixth in 1993 after starting 12th. Bryan Herta had a serious accident in 1994 at the track and didn’t compete in the race while Eddie Cheever started and finished 11th in the team’s last appearance in Toronto.


• The Honda Indy Toronto will be broadcast live at 1:00 p.m. eastern time Sunday afternoon, July 12 on ABC-TV.