Seems like we've been on a real series of adventures since I wrote for you last, just after Milwaukee. But it's resulted in two more wins for Andretti Autosport – one for myself in Iowa, one for Ryan Hunter-Reay at Loudon.
Let's start with my win. In my last blog I said I was positive heading to Iowa but, to be honest, over the first half of the weekend that optimism took a bit of a knock. The tires are changing from year to year and that's been catching me out recently. I tell you, it's tough to roll off the truck with the same setup that worked for you in your previous race at this track and then discover that this year it doesn't work and you're nowhere. But that's exactly what happened and we just had to chip away at it through the weekend. I didn't qualify well: I was flat on the gas all the way around but the car was really sliding everywhere.
However, we all know on a short oval if you can get the car underneath you, you can get to the front in a hurry. I needed to get a good start, which I did and it snowballed from there. Eventually I got past Dario Franchitti for the lead, and even when he came back past me a couple of laps later, I could see he wasn't pulling away. I thought, ‘OK we've got it, I've just got to capitalize on it.' You know, I've had cars like that before and we've led laps and actually dominated races and come up short. I knew it wasn't going to be over until we crossed the line, but I knew if the strategy went OK and if my crew did their usual good job in the pits, we had a real chance of victory.
I also saw that Dario's car was set up for running in clean air and he was struggling once he was behind me. I almost wanted to radio to Tony Kanaan and say, ‘Hey, if we can put Dario behind us, we can leave him behind and it'll just be you and me.' And, fortunately, that was the case: it came down to the two of us…and it was the No. 26 Venom Energy car that rolled into Victory Lane. Afterward, TK said something about he'd have had strong words with me if we hadn't been fighting for the win, but I am 100 percent sure I did nothing unethical. He had a full wing underneath me, he understeered, he then got in my dirty air and his car took off up the track. I didn't chop him, I did not change my line. The truth is in the replays. And we all know if it had been him ahead, he'd have done the same if not worse, given how he was driving that night, even against his teammate.
Anyway, it was a great relief that the whole Venom Energy team played their part to perfection and we got that victory. It had been way too long. Obviously I was super happy for Dad and Granddad. They've always stood by me, rock solid.
Given how we performed at Iowa, I had some real high hopes for Loudon last weekend, but out of our team, it was only Ryan who got it together during qualifying – and that's a real puzzler for all of us. Ryan's car and mine rolled off the truck with pretty similar setups and I started off really strong and then the track sort of went away from me. I was looser than Ryan on the same setup the whole weekend so, basically, he was understeering when I was running the thing flat. (I was P2 in the first session). Then, as his car became more balanced, mine went loose. The typical changes that should help the back end were just not working and, in some cases, were making things worse.
So for the race, we just rolled the dice and I thought I was going to have a really good car under me. Unfortunately, we didn't get to prove it. I had a mega start going and I was behind Alex Tagliani but the pair of us had to swerve to the right to get around Mike Conway's spin, so my right rear hit the wall. After that, I was so loose and I was at the mercy of my right rear; it was way out of whack. Dad and my engineer were trying to park me, but my thinking was, “Just keep hammering away at it until the wheels fall off; I'll be darned if I'm gonna give up.” So instead we just came in and took a lot of front wing out. I was just looking at it like we could win the A.J. Foyt Oval Trophy half of the championship. (With Dario crashing out later, it's still looking OK for us. We're still fifth.)
And then what happened, happened. I was just trying to stay out of people's way – although I guess I didn't do a great job of that – but not sure I could have done much more on a restart. I was pinched between Tomas Scheckter and TK. It's a tough one to call. Whatever, I'm not one to really go throwing blame around on Twitter. If I have a problem with them, I'll call them. In this instance, I don't – so I won't.