Texas: AJ Foyt Racing race report

FT WORTH June 5--Vitor Meira drove the ABC Supply car to a hard fought 10th place finish in the Firestone 550K at Texas Motor Speedway Saturday night to keep intact his record of top-10 finishes at the 1.5-mile Speedway. Meira started 19th and had moved into 14th by lap 34. He started challenging for the top-10 around the lap 140 mark of the 228-lap race. The car was very strong in the beginning of the stints, and he would often pass two cars on the first lap of restarts. However, about midway through the stint, the car would develop a push which got worse as the run went on. The team kept correcting for it by adding front wing on every pit stop.

Meira made some dramatic passes over the course of the race--at one point passing three cars on one lap! Actually between turns three and four!

"I got a run and I just decided to go for it because everyone was checking up," he said. "It got a little crazy and I was like, 'Hey, I'm coming through!"

He moved into seventh on lap 152 but by lap 157, the car started pushing again. When he pitted about 30 laps later, the crew added another turn of wing.

Meira hovered around the top-10, dropping back to 12th at one point but was able to bring home a tenth place finish for the ninth time in 10 starts here. It was Meira's third top-10 of the season for the Foyt team. It was the best finish for the Foyt team at their home track since 2004 when A.J. Foyt IV also finished 10th.

"Any day that you come home with a top-10 as competitive as it is these days, it's a good day," he said afterwards. "We didn't have a great starting position and we fell back a couple times but the ABC Supply car was good enough to drive back to the front. If you have a car that you can keep flat in traffic that's the way to get to the front and A.J. and Jeff [Britton, chief engineer] gave me that tonight."

Four caution periods slowed the race. The most frightening accident happened on lap 98. Simona de Silvestro escaped serious injury when her car hit the wall and then skittered across the track on the backstretch and caught fire. Safety crews were able to extricate her from the car despite the blazing fire.

Ryan Briscoe won the race. Danica Patrick finished second followed by Marco Andretti, Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti.

The IndyCar Series returns to action June 19-20 for the Iowa Corn Indy 250 at Iowa Speedway.

-source: ajfr