HUNTER-REAY: Back To My Roots; Tough Times In Houston
It's hard not to root for RHR. His 4th place performance for A.J. Foyt at Mid-Ohio was tough, but helping his mother fight cancer is an even greater challenge.
Hunter-Reay has A.J.'s ABC Supply team looking strong after a 4th at Mid-Ohio. Foyt's gift back to Ryan (on page 2) is even more heartwarming. (LAT)
After the Kentucky race I was really looking forward to getting back to Mid-Ohio where I made my IRL IndyCar Series debut in 2007 with Rahal-Letterman. Mid-Ohio is a special place to me for a few reasons. I remember attending an IndyCar race there in '92 or '93 with my Dad just as I was getting into racing karts. Fast forward seven years and I was back at Mid-Ohio racing in the Skip Barber Formula Dodge Series, then two years later the Barber Dodge Pro Series, so I've spent my fair share of summer days at Mid-Ohio.
My rookie year in Champ Car I qualified 2nd on the front row next to Paul Tracy and wound up finishing 3rd, after losing one position in the pits. Then you throw my debut for the Rahal-Letterman Team in the mix and you can see why this track is a special place for me and my career.
I arrived in Columbus Tuesday night ahead of the race for a Wednesday appearance at the Anna, Ohio Honda Engine Plant. I really enjoy doing these Honda appearances. All the folks at Honda take so much pride in the products they produce and they see us drivers as representatives of all their hard work, so it's great to take the day to meet the employees and their families. Thursday I did an appearance for IZOD at the Macy's in Columbus. That evening, Beccy and I went to see a movie, "Funny People", which we liked.
Friday we were finally getting down to business. As the first session approached I noticed AJ hadn't arrived yet. Soon after, we learned there had been some problems with AJ's plane at 35,000 feet, I guess they lost fuel pressure to one of the engines and had to do return to the airport to reset some of the systems.
Headed into our first session of the weekend we knew the guy calling all the shots and changes to the car was not going to make it. Vitor Meira and I sat down before the session and came up with a rough plan. I'll never forget coming into the pits after my first proper run and asking Vitor on the radio "Ok, whadda you want to do now?" It was pretty funny. I asked for some specific changes and we made the car better as the session went on, consistently running in the top ten. About three quarters of the way through the session AJ showed up and Vitor relinquished his temporary team manager position. I was pretty happy with the car from the first session and we just tweaked on it as we went, chasing some high speed push with turn after turn of front wing combined with some spring changes. Almost everything we did slowly but surely made the car better.
For Saturday's practice session we did much of the same and ended up P10, things were going in the right direction. We made some small adjustments for qualifying and I knew the rest would be up to me. Qualifying at Mid-O is fun - you really have to take that next step of commitment to entry speed. In the first round of knock-out qualifying we were P6, so we just squeaked in. For the next round we were putting up some great numbers and with just 15 seconds to go we were still in the Firestone Fast Six. As the checker flag came out, Franchitti bumped me out by about fifteen one hundredths of a second, which meant we would be starting 7th. I was disappointed we weren't advancing, but I wasn't going to be greedy, this was the best start for both the ABC Supply Team and me this year. We could definitely go to work from 7th on Sunday.
Saturday night Beccy and I went to dinner with Vitor. The humor in it was that we were staying in Mt. Gilead about half an hour from the track in a little Best Western, with no restaurants for miles. . The gentleman at the front desk of the hotel recommended a restaurant about five miles away so off we went. As we pulled up we saw it was an Amish restaurant. Vitor jumped out of the car and walked in to take a look and there was just a few men in rocking chairs staring at him, he was back in the car in about three seconds flat, saying "go go go", hilarious. . We ended up driving 30 miles to an Outback.
Sunday morning warm-up went to plan, we ran on black tires and checked our fuel mileage numbers, practiced some pit stops, we were ready to go racing. After the driver's meeting Beccy told me she had read Paul Tracy's blog and PT was concerned that he was going to be so fast he'd get stuck behind the 'Foyt car' in the race. Funny thing is I thought nothing of it until about halfway through the race after a yellow when he was right up behind me on a re-start. More on that later.
