Rockin’ in Sonoma
By A.J. Foyt


“A.J. Rocks!”


That’s what rock star Sammy Hagar wrote on the bottle of Cabo Wabo’s Cabo Uno tequila that he gave to me Sunday morning. We were at Infineon Raceway in Napa Valley, the heart of California wine country but at the Motorola Indy 300, it was about Cabo Wabo tequila, which is an associate sponsor on my ABC Supply Indy car. Sammy, who started Cabo Wabo, was making his first visit to the IndyCar race at the track and from what I heard afterwards, he had a great time.

If my ABC Supply car had been running a little better, Darren Manning and I would have had a better time. Darren drove a good race but we never found the balance he was looking for.


The problems started on the first day of practice when we lost valuable time with a mistake made in the gearbox assembly that we didn’t really get sorted out until most of our practice was over that day.


The half hour practice we had before qualifying on Saturday went pretty good but a change for qualifying didn’t work quite as well as we expected. Darren said the car was loose and he had a bobble in the chicane that cost him speed. We were pretty disappointed to start 16th.


Darren was still optimistic though because we had the race morning warm-up to try some other things. We did that and found some more things to make the car more comfortable for the race but we never made it top-five fast.

He grabbed a couple spots at the start but then he got stuck behind Ed Carpenter for the first 15 laps which let the leaders get away. When he finally passed Carpenter he picked up over a second a lap. Unfortunately the race didn’t have a yellow flag until 11 laps from the end so there was little opportunity to close in on the leaders. Darren picked up time but he wasn’t faster than the leaders, which is what he needed to be to close the gap. He finished 12th and we remain 13th in the standings.


So the positives from the race were that our ABC Supply crew continued to have good pit stops—all of which were under green. Speaking of the pit crew, the back of their uniforms sported patches featuring some of Sammy’s hit songs like I Can’t Drive 55, One Way To Rock, Mas Tequila, Dreams and Right Now.


The song patches were the brainchild of Becky Baranouski, wife of my team manager Craig Baranouski. Becky had obtained the associate sponsorship for the team earlier in the year and worked with Sammy’s people to get him out to the track. When it was confirmed, she came up with the song idea as a way to pay tribute to him. She is a huge Sammy Hagar fan so she worked really hard to make this all happen. After meeting him in person, I can see why—he’s a super guy.


As for the IndyCar race, Scott Dixon won it and took the point lead from Dario Franchitti who was leading when he and his teammate Marco Andretti made contact. Andretti was done and Franchitti limped home in third with a damaged front wing.


Our next race is the Detroit Indy Grand Prix at Belle Isle this weekend. It’s a street course so based on the way Darren ran at St Pete, I think we’ll be very competitive -- it’s his kind of track. The race will be broadcast Sunday, Sept 2nd at 3:30 pm on ABC-TV. Please tune in!