Sonoma
By A.J. Foyt


Our weekend in California had its ups and downs. Most of the ups were off the track and the downs were on the track. We went to Infineon Raceway knowing that we would have our work cut out for us because our test there the week before didn’t go so well.


After a short practice on Friday, we knew we needed to make some changes to the ABC Supply car for Saturday. Friday evening, my driver Vitor Meira, my son Larry and I went to an ABC Supply function at the Roots in Sonoma tasting room to meet our sponsor’s guests and sample some Foyt Family Wines.


Yep, that’s right, the boys—Larry and A.J. IV—are in the wine business! They currently have two types of wines for sale, a chardonnay and a Meritage, and they are both named with numbers that point to an important part of my racing career. The chardonnay is named ‘No. 67’ after my 1967 win at Indy and the 24 Hours of LeMans victory two weeks later. The just-released Meritage (they tell me it rhymes with heritage) is named No. 72 for my Daytona 500 victory in 1972. The label on the back of the bottle tells a little bit about the wine and the number it is named for.


I guess they figured since I’ve been racing since 1953, they’ll never run out of numbers that mean something in my career. It started with their first bottle of wine which was a cabernet sauvignon and was named No. 14. That first run is now gone but I’m told there will be more No. 14s in the near future. And in fact they will be releasing a very special, limited edition No. 77 in the next month or so. Check out their website for more information: www.foytwines.com.


Getting back to the ABC Supply party, we had wine and cheese although Vitor stuck to the water. I didn’t get to eat or drink too much because I was busy signing autographs but I did have a glass of the chardonnay and it was really good. I’m not much of a wine drinker. To me, a wine either tastes good or it doesn’t and this No. 67 tasted very good. I think everyone had a really good time. I did go to a steakhouse afterwards though.


Another highlight of the weekend was seeing my old friend Joe Leonard, the only racer to win championships in AMA motorcycles and USAC Indy cars! Joe drove for me back in 1967 and finished third at Indy when I won. On Sunday, we were talking about my dad who was my crew chief. After one rac,e Joe and I were both complaining about our cars on the flight home-- we thought ‘Daddy’ was sleeping. He wasn’t and he told both of us that the problem was not the cars—it was us because we didn’t drive hard enough! That was over 40 years ago and neither one of us forgot it. We had some laughs on Sunday.


Those were the ups and the downs? Well, things didn’t go quite as well on the track. In qualifying, Vitor got blocked on his two best laps by cars coming out of the pits. I’m not sure he would have made it out of the first round but instead of qualifying 21st I think he could have been 13th or 15th. Starting that far back is tough but he still could have had a better finish than 15th if the tires hadn’t given up on him.


The race started with an aerial show by Dan Wheldon. He rode over a wheel, climbed the barrier and flipped upside down and came sliding down the track to stop just across from my pit box. I was glad to see he was ok because it was a pretty big accident.


Vitor got off to a good start but the only way he passed cars was either in the pits or in a couple instances when they had a mistake on the track. It’s tough to pass at Infineon. We gave him good pit stops and he did beat a car or two out of the pits on the first stop which was just 7.4 seconds.


On the second stop on lap 52, we pitted him a couple laps early. We’d wanted him to run to the end of his fuel window but the car began pushing too much after 20 laps. He lost 10 – 12 seconds on the track in about three laps, so we pitted him. The crew gave him a solid stop – just under 8 seconds. Then when he was exiting the pits several cars were there and he had to let them go by and he lost a few more positions. I couldn’t believe it. He went in 13th and came out in 18th. If the tires hadn’t given up like they did and he was able to maintain his pace, he could have finished in the top-10 instead of 15th.


Vitor said the car was good (and he looked good) until the last five or so laps of the fuel run and then it went bad quick. We have to find out why. I thought we had things figured out at Mid-Ohio two weeks ago but apparently not. We are missing something critical on the road courses and it will be a focal point over the winter. I know our driver and team are better than our results have shown recently.


Congratulations to Will Power on winning the pole, the race and the road course championship. He is in a class of his own on the road courses.


We head to Chicagoland Speedway this week and I think everyone on our team is looking forward to getting back on an oval since we finished seventh at our last oval in Iowa—two months ago! The race will be televised Saturday night by Versus with coverage starting at 7 pm ET. I hope you’ll tune in.