Indy
By A.J. Foyt


The Indianapolis 500 was hot. Real hot. A fan talking about the heat on the radio the next day said, “It was so hot that my shadow was sweating.” I would have to agree with him. And for guys like me who are too damn fat, it seems even hotter.


I think the heat played a role in this year’s Indy 500. I don’t think it affected the drivers because they are pretty fit—especially my driver Vitor Meira who is going to compete in the Ironman 70.3 world championship in Clearwater this November. And they have that 220mph air conditioning going for them.


But the heat did affect the track—it was hot and slick. Some cars had handling problems because they didn’t have enough downforce or mechanical grip for the weather conditions. The no. 14 ABC Supply car was not one of those cars. We gave Vitor a good car for the race—and I give credit to our engineer Jeff Britton. He had a suggestion on setup that Vitor liked and I admit I was skeptical at first but I went along with them and it worked. I like working with Jeff because he comes up with alternatives. He’s smart and he works hard at this game.


How good did it work? Vitor started outside row ten –30th—and passed six cars on the first lap. He went around all of them on the outside. That was gutsy and impressive. He worked his way through the field and was up to 17th when the pit stops began. He pitted on lap 36, but when he pitted he came into the box tight so he could swing the car with its nose pointed outward to get a better launch. He’d been racing hard with Dan Wheldon was pitting in the pit box ahead of us. Vitor thought he could beat him out of the pits.


Unfortunately, we weren’t set up for that kind of entry because we don’t do our stops that way. So when Vitor came in tight he struck the left rear tire changer Thomas Semik with his left rear tire knocking him into Randy Baden, the airjack man. The jolt messed up the airgun too. Semik recovered and got down to business quickly but the gun wouldn’t work. After several seconds of trying to fix it, he took the spare gun and the team sent Vitor on his way. It was a 25-second stop. Vitor lost a lap and then the yellow came out. The leaders had already pitted so there was no chance to get our lap back at that point.


Our hearts sank. It is the worst feeling in the world for a driver to have a problem in the pits when you have a good car and you are racing your butt off. Not that it matters but there were a lot of drivers who shared that feeling with Vitor at Indy this year. Lots of teams had problems in the pits—teams whose cars were running in the top 10 when it happened to them.


But you need to put it behind you and keep on digging. That’s what Vitor did as a driver and we did as a team. When the chance came to get our lap back during the lap 67 caution, we stayed out while everyone else pitted. It was a gamble because we were low on fuel. But we got our lap back and we pitted under green (we had to come in because of our fuel) and the yellow came out!


The gamble worked and Vitor was back in business! He started charging to the front and went from 25th to 20th. He was about to pass rookie Simona de Silvestro when she got in trouble in turn one. He went low to avoid her and got in the marbles which are those bits of rubber that peel from the tires and collect below or above the groove.


When that stuff gets on your tires it’s like driving on ice. The ABC Supply car never made it through turn two. It skated up to the wall and pancaked it with the right side. Vitor drove it around to the pits and we saw both front and rear suspensions were bent.


We were done after 105 laps. We finished 27th, lost a bunch of points and are now 13th in the standings.


Turns one and two had been where he made some of his best passes of the race and now it cost him the race. He was totally dejected—you could see it in his eyes. He was so mad at himself that there was no way I could be mad. He apologized but I told him not to worry about it. That stuff happens—it’s happened to me.


Vitor gives 110% all the time. I like that about him. I like that he kept digging even when he was a lap down.
The bad part is that we have to wait a whole year to come back to Indy. I always hated that.
The good part is that he wasn’t hurt and now we can go on to Texas Motor Speedway this weekend and try harder in the Firestone 550k. It will be televised Saturday night—our first night race of the season—by Versus, starting at 8pm ET.


Congratulations to Dario Franchitti and Chip Ganassi on winning Indy. Dario drove a heckuva race. And after seeing Mike Conway’s accident on TV, he’s real lucky he came away with just a broken leg and a compression fracture of a vertebra. That was one nasty looking accident. Ryan Hunter-Reay has to be counting his lucky stars too. It could have been so much worse for both drivers.


It’s another Indy 500 in the books. There were a lot of mistakes made in this one by a lot of teams. Some recovered better than others. When mistakes are made, the smart teams learn from them. For our part, we’re going to look at what Vitor was trying to do on that first stop – it may be the way we do pit stops in the future. We’ll weigh the pros and cons and go from there.


This old dog ain’t too old to learn new tricks.