Edmonton
By A.J. Foyt


The IZOD IndyCar Series finished up in Canada this past weekend with a race on a temporary circuit laid out on the Edmonton’s downtown airport. It is the bumpiest track we run on. And it chews up tires which means there’s a lot of marbles, or rubber bits, off the racing line. Between the bumps and the marbles, I think everyone spun once or twice during the weekend.


When we rolled off the ABC Supply transporter, things weren’t very good. At first we were chasing the track, then the car. We had problems. And I wasn’t happy. And everyone knows that when A.J. ain’t happy, nobody’s happy. Just ask anyone on my team. I don’t think there was anyone who wasn’t ticked off at me at some point over the weekend, but I didn’t care. We had problems, I needed answers and I wasn’t very patient.


We changed some things in between Friday’s practice sessions but we had the same result—just about last on the timesheet. We made another big change Friday night and some shock changes and Vitor Meira said the car was better but still we had problems. We were still chasing the field right through qualifying.


It didn’t make sense. Going over every detail on the car Saturday night, we found a broken left rear shock and two front shocks that weren’t working the way they should have. Did I mention that Edmonton was bumpy? We re-built them that night.


In the morning warm-up, Vitor said it was like driving a different car. We made a few adjustments for the race. We had chosen to go on the black primary tires to try that alternate strategy again since we were starting in the last row alongside Tony Kanaan—he wasn’t having a great weekend either.

When the race started, Vitor looked ok but then he radioed in that the car was very loose on the high speed corners. That’s bad. Those high speed corners were the key to the race because they led onto the longest straights, aka the passing zones.


We made adjustments during the race—mostly adding front wing and by the third pit stop, Vitor said the car was better. Speaking of our pit stops—every stop was 8 seconds or less which is a major improvement.


Vitor made a great move in traffic when there was a jam-up ahead of him about midway through the race and went from 17th to 14th. About 15 laps later, cars began making their final pit stops and Vitor got as high as 12th but then he spun off the track (there was a lot of that in this race). He ran a couple laps and came in saying there was something wrong with the rear of the car. It was a little early for our fuel strategy but we needed to check the car. We fueled him and gave him a set of slightly worn reds and the problem disappeared.


It turned out he had a left rear tire going down. He ended up finishing 16th and probably would have finished 13th if he hadn’t spun so he didn’t lose too much. He’s still 12th in points but it has really tightened up around him.


Getting out of Edmonton without tearing up anything major was a small victory in itself. We’ve got a weekend off before we head to Mid-Ohio in August. We tested there last month and it went pretty good. Both Vitor and our ABC Supply team have run good at that track so we’re all looking forward to going back. The Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio will be shown live Sunday, August 8 starting at 3 p.m. ET on the Versus channel.