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ABC SUPPLY/A.J. FOYT 225 PRESENTED BY TIME WARNER
CABLE
 MILWAUKEE
June 3, 2007 – Darren Manning continues to flirt with the
top-ten as he finished 11th in the ABC Supply/A.J. Foyt 225
presented by Time Warner Cable at the Milwaukee Mile Sunday
afternoon.
The race started on time despite a brief rain shower which dampened
the pre-race ceremonies celebrating A.J. Foyt’s 50th anniversary in
Indy car racing. Craig Stoehr, chairman of the Milwaukee Mile,
presented Foyt with a proclamation by the Governor James Doyle
naming June 3, 2007 as A.J. Foyt Day in Wisconsin and also gave him
an original piece of artwork which featured some of the memorable
cars that Foyt drove in his career. Green Bay Packers defensive
lineman Gilbert Brown, kicker Dave Rayner and running back Noah
Herron presented Foyt with an autographed No. 50 A.J. Hawk football
jersey. Hawk, who was named after the racing legend, could not
attend due to a family commitment.
Stoehr then presented Foyt with the A.J. Foyt Victory Lane
plaque that will be mounted permanently at the track. Foyt visited
the Mile’s victory lane four times in the Indy cars and six times in
the stock cars.
As grand marshal, Foyt gave the command, “Girls and boys, start your
engines!”
In the race, Manning started 15th but slipped to last on the start
and complained of the car pushing in the opening stint. By the time
of the first pitstop however, he asked for no changes. The ABC
Supply team gave him fresh tires (and the air pressure had been
adjusted slightly) and Manning proceeded to click off laps as quick
as the leaders. He climbed to twelfth by his second stop but a
miscommunication from the pits caused him to miss an opportunity to
regain the lap he’d lost just before the caution flag came out on
lap 87 for contact between Dan Wheldon and Danica Patrick.
Manning pitted with the leaders and then ran with leaders in the
next stint despite being a lap down. The team consistently gave him
good pitstops, all under nine seconds which allowed him to either
gain or maintain position on the track. Despite not getting a
top-ten result, Manning’s competitive showing was in marked contrast
to the team’s previous races at the Mile.
“Overall, it was good,” said Manning afterwards. “This was our first
short track together. We had a choice to start out with a set-up
that we’d been running all year or to go with the team’s set-up from
last year which worked for Jeff Bucknum. We chose Jeff’s set-up but
it didn’t suit my style and we lost the first hour of practice. We
had to change the car and we had about an hour to set it up for
qualifying.
“So when the car ran as well as it did in the race it was
encouraging. It hurt when we qualified so poorly because it’s so
difficult to overtake here and when you run with slower cars, you
run slower. When we were running with the leaders, I was keeping
pace and pulling away from the cars behind us. I’m happy with the
progress the team continues to make and I’m really looking forward
to Texas.”
Tony Kanaan won the race. He assumed the lead when pole winner Helio
Castroneves’ rear wing suddenly collapsed causing him to spin and
crash coming off turn four. Mysteriously his teammate Sam Hornish’s
car also suffered a rear wing failure several laps later but not
enough to cause him to spin. Even more surprising was the fact that
IndyCar officials allowed Hornish to continue racing with the broken
wing strut.
Following Kanaan across the line were Dario Franchitti, Wheldon,
Scott Dixon and Vitor Meira.
The next race is the Bombardier Learjet 500 at Texas Motor Speedway
this Saturday night starting at 10 pm eastern time on ESPN2.
NOTES & QUOTES: ABC SUPPLY/AJ FOYT 225 AT
MILWAUKEE
Darren Manning: No. 14 ABC Supply Dallara/Honda
 • Manning
on the Milwaukee Mile: “The track is similar to Indy in that it
is a flat track but you run a lot more downforce so in that way it
is similar to a track like St. Pete. It requires more driver input
than the superspeedways. It’s tough to pass which also makes it more
like a road course so you have to get the car comfortable enough so
that you can put it where others can’t. The ABC Supply team was
pretty good here last year so I think we’ll be alright. Milwaukee is
the type of track where the good cars really show up and the bad
cars can’t hide.”
• A.J. Foyt remembers the tradition of going to Milwaukee the
first weekend after Indy. “It’s like it was in the old days and
brings back memories, good and bad. I’ve won there and I visited the
hospital there too. Back then, there wasn’t as much pressure at the
Mile after the pressure at Indy but that’s not the case for our team
because ABC Supply is sponsoring this race. We’ll have a lot of fans
rooting for us and we want to come through for them….One of the
things that I really liked about Milwaukee was the food, to be
truthful. They have great steaks which I don’t need any more as big
as I’m getting.”
• Over 1400 ABC Supply employees and guests will be on hand
this weekend to see Ken Hendricks, founder and CEO of the Beloit,
WI-based company, wave the green flag to start the ABC Supply/AJ
Foyt 225.
• All City Exteriors of Oregon, WI are this weekend’s winners
of the ABC Supply Your Name Here Promotion for its customers. The
company name will be put on the top of the sidepods of the No. 14
ABC Supply Dallara/Honda. Waylon and Kelley Kannenberg will receive
selected merchandise, race tickets, hospitality and garage passes,
plus a Meet and Greet with A.J. Foyt and Darren Manning. The “Your
Name Here” promotion selected winners by random drawing from a pool
of entries sent in by ABC Supply customers earlier this year.
• The ABC Supply/AJ Foyt 225 will be shown live at 4:00 p.m.
eastern time Sunday, June 3 on ABC-TV. |
