Coming Back
By A.J. Foyt


Coming back from accidents…I’ve had to do that a lot in my career so I knew how Vitor Meira felt when he first climbed in the No. 14 ABC Supply car at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Wednesday for our Indy car test there. He was a little nervous but even more anxious to get back in the saddle and see for himself if he still had ‘it.’ The ‘it’ is the confidence and the ability to take an Indy car to its limit.


The good drivers never really lose ‘it’. The not-so-good drivers? I think it’s much harder for them to come back from a bad accident. For Vitor, the hard part was being patient enough to allow his broken back to heal. He worked out every day or as much as his doctors would allow him; hell, he was even taking calcium pills thinking it would make his bones heal quicker. Everything he did since the accident was so he could get back behind the wheel as fast as possible.


His Indy 500 accident was scary looking. Going into turn one, he and Raphael Matos were fighting for position, not to mention the same groove. So when Matos turned down on Vitor, it made the no. 14 veer to the right and the car hit the SAFER barrier almost head-on! Then it whipped around and jumped the wall so Vitor was riding it like a velodrome motorcycle racer—backwards. It looked really bad so I was relieved to know he was conscious and hurting, but alive. He was very lucky to get away with just two broken vertebrae in his lower back.


Coming back from a violent accident like that at the same track where you crashed, can be tough but race drivers put that kind of stuff out of their minds. Going out in the car that first time, you have some emotion, I don’t care who you are, but you get over it quick. Vitor said he saw the dent he’d made in the turn one wall –it was still there. It didn’t seem to bother him though because he was over 221mph within the first 20 laps!


I told him we weren’t there to set any speed records, I just wanted him to get his feel back, get comfortable. That was our main goal of the test was to get him back in the saddle. In the afternoon session, he ran over 222mph! He ran 65 laps before we put the car away. He was happy and so were we. He got his confidence right where it needed to be. And while I was sure that was how it would turn out for him, you don’t really know until he actually does it.


Now we are focused on our final race of the year at Homestead-Miami Speedway. I think we should have a good run there with Ryan Hunter-Reay. Vitor tested there in the beginning of the year. We’ve found some things on the car during the season that should make it run even better for Ryan. Of course, we’ve never been there with him so there will be a little fine-tuning that we’ll have to do for him on our basic set-up.


We’re not going to run Vitor in a second car because I think it would be foolish to put him in that situation. He wouldn’t have that much to gain and it’d be risky. And the way our season has gone, we don’t need to expose ourselves to additional risk.


Speaking of this season, I’ll be glad to get it over with because it’s been one of our worst ever! I think Vitor and Ryan would agree with me. Ryan looked like he was going to have a good season when he started off with a second-place finish with Vision Racing in St. Petersburg. But then he struggled at Indy and had a lot of bad luck. And we know how Indy turned out for Vitor. It became one of those seasons that you can’t wait to get through.


Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy working with Ryan and I think he has the potential to win a lot of races. We did have a couple finishes in the top-ten and he drove a great race when he finished fourth at Mid-Ohio. But overall, it was a terrible season for all of us. We are definitely looking forward to coming back strong in 2010.


Vitor worked hard to come back from his terrible accident at Indy. Well, we’re going to work very hard over the winter to come back from this terrible season. We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again.