Race Report: Honda Indy Toronto


TORONTO July 18, 2010--Vitor Meira and the ABC Supply team took lemons and made sweet lemonade out of the Honda Indy Toronto IndyCar race Sunday afternoon. Meira started 26th and finished 11th to advance to 12th in the IZOD IndyCar Series point standings.


Going into the race, A.J. Foyt and the ABC Supply team planned an alternate pit strategy knowing that it was their only chance to break into the top half of the field because it was difficult to pass on the 1.75 mile street course through Toronto’s Exhibition Park.


Starting last because of a problem with the brakes in qualifying, Meira passed Milka Duno who was off the pace on the start on the backside of the track as the field came around for the green. In trying to catch up to the field, he overcooked it going into Turn 8 and ran into the runoff area. He did a quick spin around and rejoined the field but was nearly half a lap down to the leaders on the first lap. He did catch up to the tail of the pack within 10 laps.


Meira was in 24th when the first full course yellow came out for contact between teammates Takuma Sato and Mario Moraes on lap 16. Meira, and Paul Tracy, in 18th, stayed out while everyone else pitted. Meira moved into second behind Tracy.


On the restart on lap 21, Helio Castroneves was in third and as the field approached Turn 3, Castroneves rear-ended Meira and then slid straight into the Turn 3 tire barrier while Meira continued on. That accident brought out another full course yellow.


On the restart Meira lost second to pace setters Dario Franchitti and Will Power before another caution slowed the field. Under green again, pole winner Justin Wilson passed Meira for fourth on lap 32. When the yellow came out on lap 33, Meira ducked into the pits on lap 34 to fuel up and put on the red-rimmed tires.


The team had decided to make the red alternate tire stint its shortest stint since Meira was more comfortable on the primary black-rimmed tires. The crew put in several turns of front wing for the new tires and did it under eight seconds, allowing Meira to beat Tracy, (who had been running second when he pitted), out of the pits.


Meira came out in 19th position and soldiered on until his next stop on lap 51. He was one of the first to pit in the final fuel window. That stop was under 7 seconds because he had run just half a stint and it took less time to fill the tank. When the stops cycled out, he was 17th.


Then drivers started making mistakes and either crashed into the barriers or each other. Meira advanced into ninth by lap 74 when Alex Tagliani and Tomas Sheckter brought out the sixth and final full course yellow.


On the lap 76 restart, Meira made a run on Simona DeSilvestro but the cars bottled up approaching Turn 3 forcing Meira to get hard on the brakes. He slid into DeSilvestro who stopped him from sliding off track. Unfortunately, Meira flat-spotted his tires in the incident and he had to nurse the car home with 10 laps to go. He lost a position to Wilson who was charging back through the field. Wilson had spun five laps earlier after being passed on a lap 72 restart by Will Power, who went on to win his fourth race of the year. Dan Wheldon nipped Meira with two laps to go to take away what would have been Meira’s fifth top-10 finish of the season.


“Crazy race!” Meira exclaimed afterwards, adding, “Considering where we started, we got this finish by being smart. The ABC Supply Team did a very good strategy—couldn’t be better. The pit stops were good and the car was picking up lap by lap but the incident with Simona killed my front tires. We were faster than the cars around me but on the restart, I got a good run off two and tried to make a move but it was hectic under braking to Turn 3 and everyone started to brake early. She braked early and I had nowhere to go so I had to lock it up and hope for the best. We crashed there but got away lucky because she stopped me from going straight off. But it killed my front tires and that’s how we lost our top-10 position in the last couple laps. But the team did a very good job on the pit stops and strategy.”


The ABC Supply Racing transporter will head straight to Edmonton, Canada from Toronto to prepare for next weekend’s Honda Indy Edmonton. The race will be televised live Sunday, July 25th, on Versus, with pre-race coverage starting at 5 p.m. ET.
 

Qualifying Report: Honda Indy Toronto


TORONTO, CAN July 17—Vitor Meira and the ABC Supply team will roll the dice tomorrow afternoon in the Honda Indy Toronto. They will have nothing to lose because Meira will start 26th due to a problem in the first round of qualifying today.


The disappointment was palpable for the ABC Supply team which had been 11th quickest on the time sheet in the practice session earlier in the day.


“We have to figure out what happened in qualifying still,” said Meira. “Definitely something that affected the brakes a lot happened—we know it’s happening but we don’t know where it’s coming from yet. Before that everything was great, the car unloaded good, it was fast. I was able to learn the track fast, the car was up to it, the team’s doing a great job, we just have to find what went wrong in qualifying. There’s only one worst time to have a problem and that’s in the race. It’s going to be a tough day out there but in this position, it’s easy to gamble.”


After four laps in the 15-minute first round qualifying session, A.J. Foyt told Meira to pit for a new set of tires. Meira didn’t make it back to the pits however, sliding into a tire barrier in turn five. The ABC Supply car wasn’t damaged but because a full course caution was brought out (initially for Paul Tracy who spun and stopped in the middle of the track) moments before Meira went into the tire barrier, Meira and Tracy lost their two best laps from the entire session.


When Meira returned to the track with another set of new tires, there were just five minutes left in the session. The car was a little better but not where it’d been earlier in the day. And his two best laps which would have put him around 16th were disallowed due to the caution coming out.


Justin Wilson won his first IZOD IndyCar Series pole position driving for the Dreyer-Reinbold team. The Honda Indy Toronto will be televised live by ABC-TV tomorrow afternoon starting at 12:30pm ET.
 

Notes & Quotes: Honda Indy Toronto


• Vitor Meira on IZOD IndyCar Series new car for 2012: “I think it is great to have Dallara as a partner, I can speak directly about their safety, feedback and technology. I’ve been driving Dallaras since 1999 in Formula 3 so I’m glad this happened, I’m glad they’re involved. I’m glad the concept is similar to what they issued in the press release. From what I hear and what I know, it’s going in the right direction. I’m really excited--really exciting times for the IZOD IndyCar Series. I’m glad to be part of this historic time for t he series. Not only do we have the new engine coming out, we have the new car now, we have the Centennial Era for the Speedway. So it’s really exciting times.”


• A.J. Foyt on IndyCar Car Series new car for 2012: “I appreciate the fact that they are trying to cut costs because that is a problem in racing, the costs are way up and the purses are the same as they were 10 years ago. It’s great to see IRL really working on bringing the prices down. It will be interesting to see how many manufacturers will build bodies for the Indycar Safety Cell.”


• Team Director Larry Foyt on 2012 IndyCar Series race car: “From what I’ve seen, I like it. With all the factors that the ICONIC committee had to consider, they came up with the best solution with the right things in mind. Obviously safety’s the most important and the Dallara car has been a very safe car. There have been some big accidents and guys have sustained minimal injuries from those big accidents so I think it was good to stick with Dallara there and I like the other manufacturers coming in which I think adds a lot to the series. I think it will be interesting to see what the other manufacturers come up with for the aero kits. I like it. I’m not a fan of a spec-looking car with everything looking the same so I think this approach will bring a different and more interesting look to the series. There will be a little more competition and that’s good. The other big issue that we’re facing these days is the budget so I’m glad they’re addressing that.”


• Vitor Meira will make his first visit to Toronto this weekend: “I have never been to Toronto—only Edmonton—but I’ve heard nice things about Toronto. I’m looking forward to seeing the city.”

Meira on adapting to a new course: “It’s not the ideal situation because it’s good to know where the bumps are, where the turns are, how hard you can push here or there. I choose to look at the good side which is I have enough experience in the Indy cars that I don’t think it will take me long to get the track down to where we start understanding the car. Not only that, the track is on the shorter side, it’s the shortest street course (lap times) that we have, so we’re going to have a lot of practice time and we’ll get a lot done in a shorter period of time. It makes it easier—a long track takes much longer to get down, a short track you can get memorized--not the track itself but what to do every corner-- pretty easily."


• Meira on practice sessions: “It is better to have the practice session broken up into three one-hour sessions over two days the way they have it now because we can sit down and go through what needs to be done between each session. And myself, I can go through the data and think about what to do the next session so it’s definitely better to have it broken down--not only during the day but to the next day as well. And a street course changes a lot so you have to know in advance how things are going to be. A street course changes a lot because it doesn’t have any rubber at all on the surface, so the more the cars run, the more rubber it gets. It gets grippier and faster. You need to change the car accordingly because if you have a good car with the track not rubbered, that car will not be a good car in qualifying when the track is rubbered. Normally the more rubbered the track gets, the more push you get, so you have to counteract that.”


• Last year Ryan Hunter-Reay subbed for Meira who was still recovering from his injuries at Indy. In the IZOD IndyCar Series’ first visit to the street circuit, Hunter-Reay started 12th and finished seventh. A former CART and Champ Car racer, Hunter-Reay had raced at the circuit three times prior to last year. The Foyt team’s best finish in Toronto during its run in the CART Series was sixth with Robby Gordon in 1993.


• Meira is currently 13th in the IZOD IndyCar Series standings. His best finish to date – 3rd -- came in the streets of Sao Paulo, Brazil while his best start is 6th which he earned at Kansas.


• The Honda Indy Toronto will be broadcast live by ABC-TV Sunday starting at 12:30pm ET.


• For more information on the Foyt Racing program, please check out: www.ajfoytracing.com . For information on ABC Supply Co., go to: www.abcsupply.com.