TORONTO July 12, 2009—Toss that monkey aside! Ryan Hunter-Reay and A.J. Foyt’s ABC Supply team finished seventh for their best finish together since Hunter-Reay began driving for Foyt four races ago. It was the Foyt team’s best finish of the season to date which has been the toughest the team’s had in several years.
"I'm happy for these guys to be able to roll the ABC car back in the truck and it's nice not having anyone run into us on the first lap. We got going good early and we had a good car and then we got caught out on a full course yellow with our pit strategy. We had been running 5th and then we were 16th but we were able to work our way back up and get a top ten, thanks in part to good clean pit stops. So it's a big positive for the ABC Supply team. Maybe we finally got that monkey off our back."
Starting 12th, Hunter-Reay popped into the top-10 on the first lap and moved the ABC Supply Dallara/Honda into ninth by lap two. Six laps later he was eighth when the first yellow came out for Dan Wheldon and Richard Antinucci. The team pitted, going from the softer Firestone red-rimmed alternate tires to the black primary tires.
Since everyone didn’t pit, the No. 14 went from eighth to 14th, but as the pit stops cycled out, he advanced as high as second before having to pit again on lap 46 under green. Prior to that stop, Hunter-Reay asked for help with the car which had developed an understeer. A quick turn of front wing, a tire pressure adjustment and the crew quickly dispatched him in 8.1 seconds. He came out in 11th and moved into the top 10 three laps later. By lap 58, he was eighth when the team told him to the pit for the final stop of fuel on lap 59, after which he’d be able to go the distance. Unfortunately, a full course yellow came out for Ed Carpenter and Graham Rahal’s tangle that same lap and only moments before Hunter-Reay could duck into the pits which nullified the fuel strategy.
He then had to pit with the whole field. Some cars (Ryan Briscoe, Will Power and Paul Tracy) that had pitted three laps before the full course yellow were able to advance to the front of the field when the rest of the field pitted. Hunter-Reay emerged in 13th, but when Tracy and Helio Castroneves crashed on lap 66, he advanced to 11th. He moved into the top 10 when Tony Kanaan made contact with the wall.
With 10 laps to go, the final yellow was brought out by Alex Tagliani’s aggressive driving, resulting in his crashing with Mario Moraes and Tomas Scheckter. Hunter-Reay did a great job avoiding the tangle which he saw building several turns before.
He skirted by to claim seventh. Under the yellow, he reported that he thought the clutch was going and Foyt told him to nurse it home. Apparently, the problem wasn’t as serious as Hunter-Reay thought as he was able to crank off his fastest lap of the race on lap 83 of the 85-lap event.
Dario Franchitti, whose luck took a turn for the better with a well-timed pitstop, won his third race of the season. Second through sixth were Briscoe, Power, Scott Dixon, Justin Wilson and Danica Patrick.
“Ryan drove a great race and the car looked good from where I was spotting,” said Larry Foyt, team director of A.J. Foyt Racing. “His fastest lap was just 1/100th of a second off Dario’s fastest lap so to me that says we had a pretty good car today. And the crew did a great job today too. It was an overall great effort. To be competitive and consistent in practice and then to advance to the second round of qualifying which we hadn’t done in a while and then to run good in the race, all that together made for a good weekend of overall competitiveness which we’ve been lacking lately so hopefully that’s going to get us back on track where we need to be…I guess we’re going to have a monkey on the pit box everywhere we go.”