Edmonton
By A.J. Foyt


Remember that monkey we thought we got rid of with our top-10 finish in the Toronto IndyCar race? In two days on the City Centre Airport course in Edmonton, Canada, we went from ok to bad in practice and qualifying. So race morning, we took that monkey out of storage, put him on the pitbox and ran in the top-10 in the morning warm-up (at least until we quit practice). That monkey was looking like a good luck charm, and I was starting to think of names for him.


In the race, Ryan Hunter-Reay got off to a good start in our ABC Supply Dallara/Honda. He drove the No. 14 car from 21st to 15th in one lap--partly because he passed cars on the track (and not too many were able to do that!) plus three other cars got in trouble on the start. Maybe the Rexall Edmonton Indy was going to be another top-10 finish for us in Canada!


When he moved into 11th after the first round of pit stops, that top-10 was looking even better until our second pit stop. The stop went fine—it was 7.7 seconds. But if you stop earlier than the cars you’re racing with, they gain track position because they’re racing on hot tires with lighter fuel loads and can run faster than the car that is coming out of the pits heavy with fuel on cold tires.


It wasn’t as much of a problem on the first stop because we started on Firestone’s softer alternate tire (red-rimmed) and put on another red set for the second fuel run. But for the final (we thought) fuel run, we were out of reds (you only get three for the weekend and we used one set in qualifying) and had to use the primary (black) tires, which were made from a harder compound.


Our car didn’t work as well on those black tires—Ryan radioed in that the car was loose and he was just trying to hang on. I heard afterwards that there were others who complained about them too. The first five laps into his run were pretty slow which is when Danica squeezed out of the pits ahead of him. Just before pit exit, he’d gotten off line to let leader Will Power to pass. As they headed into turn one (which is where pit exit dumped out) it was messy and on that lap he lost time and track position. He didn’t say much on the radio but I knew he wasn’t happy with the tires but after five more laps he got back into the 64-second bracket.


And then he got into a little bit of trouble on the back side of the course and hit the wall hard enough to knock off the rear wing. By the time he made it back to the pits, he went from 12th to 17th. The ABC Supply crew got to work removing the wing but they had trouble getting the tethers free. After Indy, the cars had to have a second set of tethers and there isn’t much room to work around in there, especially with twisted pieces.


They finally replaced the wing with the one we fixed from a little accident we had on the first day of practice and off he went. The tires didn’t get any better and he thought he may have flat-spotted them with his quarter spin but we told him to just ride it out because he was two laps ahead of 18th. He finished 17th which is where we are in the points too. Not good.


So now we head to Kentucky Speedway this weekend. The oval track races have been pretty dull this year--except for us. We could have our own highlight reel of spectacular crashes. It’s been a real tough season.


Because of the lack of excitement, the officials have added 300 pounds of downforce to the cars through aerodynamic options that can be used (or not). They’re hoping there will be more side-by-side racing as a result because the cars will be more stable in the turns.


Plus Honda is giving the teams a little more horsepower through an overtake button which allows the engine an extra 200 rpm above the limit of 10,300rpm. At Kentucky it will translate into five extra horsepower but at other tracks it can be as much as 20hp. There’s a catch though—you’ll have a limit of total time, say four minutes. And you can’t have it all at once. For each race, the duration of the overtake session will be adjusted depending on what, I’m not sure. But a session may last 10 seconds, 15 seconds, or 20 seconds, etc. before dropping the engine revs back to the maximum 10,300 limit. Whatever is determined for that race, it will be the same on all the engines.


So the strategy game just got a little more complicated. Let’s hope that it makes the racing closer. Tune in to find out this Saturday night. You can find the Meijer Indy 300 on the VERSUS channel at 8pm EDT.