Kentucky Highs and Lows
By A.J. Foyt



The IndyCar race at Kentucky Speedway Saturday night held both highs and lows for me. And since I want to end this column on a high note, I’ll start with the problems first. Number 13 for starters—it’s never been a favorite number of mine and we seem to be stuck in 13th.


The two-day event at Kentucky was frustrating for me, my driver Darren Manning and our ABC Supply crew because although we had some set-ups which were workable, the car ran slow. We changed quite a few things on the car—including the suspension—but we never found any more speed. We didn’t lose speed, we just ran the same speed the whole weekend…slow.


In looking over the data we believe we may have found the problem but we won’t know until we do a little more investigating. What I do know is that we started 18th and finished 13th which is where we’ve been in the point standings too.


Now for the good news…we had some very quick pit stops. The best was the first one because in addition to the tires and fuel, there was a wing adjustment and the crew did it in 7.1 seconds…and picked up four spots! All of the other stops were in the high sevens to-mid-eight seconds range except for the time that one of the guns jammed. We did lose a position on that one. But the team is becoming more consistent on their stops—even with the addition of a rookie left rear tire changer.


The best news from this weekend for me, however, was the performance of my grandson Anthony (A.J. IV). He scored his best result ever in Indy cars with his third place finish for Vision Racing. It was their best finish of the season. I know Anthony was thrilled but I bet he was surprised by how many other people were thrilled for him. He’s had some good runs in the past but something always seemed to happen before the finish. That was not the case this time—he ran a helluva race and he came away with a strong finish.


Speaking of finishes, we were lucky that the end of this race had a happy ending, especially after Dario Franchitti launched into an aerobatic act (with the emphasis on air) after the checkered flag flew. He ran over Kosuke Matsuura’s wheel which launched Franchitti’s car into the air. He did some twirls before he finally landed. It was yet another spectacular accident that everyone was able to walk away from. He admitted afterwards that he didn’t realize the race was over.


I flipped a car once after the checkered but that was because I was ticked off and really chunked it into the turn and hooked a rut (it was on a dirt track). I learned my lesson and I’ll bet Franchitti has learned his too.


His was a bad news-good news story too. His accident could have been so much worse but for the second week in a row, he walked away.The good news continued with AGR teammate Tony Kanaan winning the race over point leader Franchitti’s closest pursuer, Scott Dixon.


The good news for our team is that the next two races are road course events, which are what our driver Darren loves to run. In fact he is racing this weekend in a LeMans Series sports car race at Spa-Francorchamps, his favorite track in the world (no, it’s not Indy—that’s my favorite track).


He’ll return to the States next Monday which gives him plenty of time to catch up on his rest before the running the ABC Supply car at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif. a week from Sunday (Aug 26). That race will start at 3:30pm on ESPN. I hope you’ll tune in to watch!