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A.J.'s Race Recaps: |
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Season Preview
 By A.J. Foyt
I am in Brazil for our IZOD IndyCar Series opener and I’m anxious to get the season started. We have Vitor Meira back in the No. 14 ABC Supply Indy car after he spent most of 2009 recovering from his bad accident at Indianapolis where he broke his back. He is fully recovered and did well when we tested at Barber Motorsports Park two weeks ago.
For the first time in the history of the IRL, we are opening the racing season outside of the United States. Vitor is excited to be racing in his home country and he assures me I will have a good time.
We have a lot of things to look forward to this season and I believe it will be our best season of the decade. Our team has put in a lot of hours getting the ABC Supply cars ready. They spent the winter overhauling all of the equipment, rebuilding or replacing parts. They’re fitting together the brand new car I bought over the winter but that won’t appear until Indy. I always like to take a new car to Indy. It’s our biggest race of the year and I always want to approach it by giving it our best shot.
Which brings me to the new engineer we hired this year, Jeff Britton, who brings a lot of experience to our team. Jeff worked with Vitor in 2005 when he finished second at Indy so Jeff and Vitor know how to communicate with each other already. That makes a big difference in the chemistry of the team. With our first test I could see that we went faster with every outing so that is a good sign of things to come.
Going to Brazil will be a first for me as the farthest south I’ve been is to Mexico. I’ve heard a lot of different things about Brazil so it will be interesting to find out what’s true and what isn’t. We’re racing in the city of Sao Paulo. I understand the traffic is really bad there which probably explains why they aren’t shutting down certain roads until late Friday night.
It’s only a two day race so that means the drivers will have to practice and qualify on Saturday and race on Sunday. Since they’ve never seen the track—a street course with lots of twists and turns--that will be a little more challenging for them. Being that it is the first race of the season adds to that challenge because everyone is so anxious to get going--the first race is always a bit wild.
I’m sure Vitor is excited to be racing in his home country in front of his family, friends and fans. It puts a little more pressure on all of the Brazilian drivers because they want to do really well but I think Vitor will handle the pressure. He is a very focused race driver so I know he can shut out all of the other distractions that come with racing at your home track.
Everyone on the ABC Supply team is looking forward to having a great season this year. And I am ready to get it started!
Tune in to VERSUS this Sunday at 11:30 a.m. ET or if you don’t get the VERSUS channel, you can watch the race on the internet by going to www.indycar.com. In the meantime, call your cable company or Direct TV and tell them you want VERSUS!
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