St. Pete's IOU
By A.J. Foyt


My driver Darren Manning said St. Pete owes him after last year’s race when he ran good but didn’t get a top five finish.


After Sunday’s Honda Grand Prix at St. Petersburg, it still does.


We were on our way to a fourth place finish and maybe even a top three the way Darren was following Tony Kanaan (who finished third) through traffic after our last pit stop. And after Kanaan chopped off Darren in pit lane nearly causing a big wreck, I figured when it came down to the two of them fighting for position, Darren was going to be pretty motivated to get by him.


And if he wasn’t, I would have reminded him. Although going by what he said on the radio, I doubt he’d have needed reminding.


But a faulty gearbox took away our chance for a great finish in the ABC Supply car. For the second straight week we finished 13th. I always say you make your own luck but I’m starting to wonder.


This year the cars have a new paddle shift system with a paddle control mounted on the steering wheel instead of the knob and lever mounted on the side of the chassis. The driver never has to take his hands off the wheel.


That, along with the steering aid controls (also new this year) which make the cars way easier to steer, means the drivers won’t have the bloodied and blistered hands after driving two hours over bumpy street and road courses. But new systems often have problems and ours did. So did the winner, Graham Rahal who had to shift manually because he also had an electronic failure with the paddle shift. Lucky for him, his back-up emergency button didn’t fail like ours did.


By the way, Graham drove a great race. He showed a lot of maturity in his driving. He really impressed me, much more than his father ever did. Seems like a nice kid too.


Just for the record, I said in my last column that I didn’t think those Champ Car regulars would take too long to adapt and after this weekend, I’m sure others agree. This year will be very competitive for everyone which is great for Indy car racing.


Getting back to our race, rain came right before the start so everyone put on rain tires. Darren made some great moves in the beginning to go from 11th to eighth—he grew up racing in England so he had a lot of experience racing in the rain and it showed.


Then he started to fade and he was dropping back. He figured afterwards that he might have run too hard and abused his tires, easy to do with rain tires which use a softer compound to provide more grip in wet conditions. Maybe it worked to our favor though because when we asked him about switching to slicks, he said to go for it.


We were the first to make that switch during the caution for debris around lap 34. That was a critical decision and the right one! We knew it was right after the restart--he worked his way through the field like a hot knife through butter. He even brushed the wall but kept on going, climbing from 20th to fourth in 11 laps!


We were looking good even after Ryan Briscoe had hit the wall bringing out a full course caution. I hated to see that yellow though because it took away our track position and the advantage of our early switch to slicks. It also gave others like Rahal and Ryan Hunter-Reay an option of not pitting and making it on fuel (although Hunter-Reay did run out on the last lap) or taking on less fuel and no tires because they had pitted 10 laps after our first stop. We had to pit for a full load of fuel so we took on tires too. Came out in ninth but Darren was marching through the field. He posted his fastest lap of the race on lap 73.


So we were still looking good until Darren came down the front straightaway way too slow. He yelled “I’ve lost power!” And then he said something about his gears being stuck. Turned out that while he was trying to switch the emergency shift button because of a problem with the paddle shift, he hit the ignition switch by mistake, killing the engine but he quickly refired it.


The emergency button didn’t work during our emergency though. I told him to stay out there and nurse it to the end. The yellow came out a lap later which made that easier to do.


I felt like we’d been kicked in the stomach--just like I felt last year at about the same time in this race. Yep, last year Darren spun on lap 75 while challenging Kanaan for third after running in the top five the whole race. This year he had the mechanical problem on lap 76 as he was about to pass Enrique Bernoldi for sixth with fifth place runner Ernesto Viso in his sights.


Next year, I’m going to hold my breath till we make it through lap 77 in St. Pete. Maybe, just maybe, Lap 77 will be the turning point for our luck at this street race.


After all, St. Pete owes us…still.