Foyt charges to fifth place finish at Iowa for Vision Racing
Starting from the 18th position, Vision Racing driver A.J. Foyt IV charged all the way up to a fifth place finish at Iowa Speedway today for the Iowa Corn Indy 250. It is Foyt’s best finish of the season driving the newly painted No. 2 Lilly Diabetes/Vision Racing Dallara/Honda/Firestone machine.
Rain showers on Saturday canceled qualifying for the race and the starting grid was set by IndyCar Series entrant point standings. Knowing that the Lilly car was better than its 18th place starting spot, Foyt made a run to the front at the drop of the green flag and advanced six positions on the first lap. By lap number eight Foyt had cracked the top-10.
From there, Foyt continued to work his way through the top-10 and battled to finish fifth on the day. The fifth place finish moved Foyt ahead five spots in the championship point standings to the 13th position (153 points) as well as matched the team’s best finish of the season. Teammate Ed Carpenter also finished fifth at Indianapolis and Homestead.
Unfortunately for Carpenter, he was less fortunate in his second trip to Iowa as he crashed out of the race on lap 39 due to mechanical failure. At the time of the accident, Carpenter and the No. 20 Menards/Vision Racing Menards Honda powered Dallara were running in eighth and looking to slice through the lead pack.
Carpenter started from ninth, but the accident relegated him to a 23rd place finish and just his second non-running finish of the season. As a result, Carpenter dropped two spots in the point standings to 10th (166 points).
A.J. Foyt IV – No. 2 Lilly Diabetes/Vision Racing Dallara/Honda/Firestone
“I’m just glad we finally got a good run this year. We got a top-five which is what this Vision team deserves. I’m really happy for Lilly, my engineers and the crew guys. I feel like we could have done even better but we’ll take it. This was the most fun I’ve had out there in a long time and the best race of the year for sure. We’re happy to have Lilly on board for the rest of the year and get a good result them and for the team. They really deserve it. It was really satisfying to get that fifth place finish especially from our 18th place spot on the starting grid. I knew I had to have a great start to have a chance. I got a good start and just took the chance that everyone was going to let off the gas going into turn one on the bottom so I went to the top and made up some spots. I liked the high line, but everyone was making fun of me for using that line in practice, but it turned out that everybody ended up doing that later in the race. It was a really challenging track physically, mentally and very fast. It seemed to suit me. We’ve been looking for a good top five finish all year long and we finally got one.”
Ed Carpenter – No. 20 Menards/Vision Racing Dallara/Honda/Firestone
“I had a really good car and got an okay start. (Ryan) Hunter-Reay got around me on the start when I got really loose. I started working my Menards car and moving towards the front. Danica was doing her normal supreme block job. That’s two races in a row I had to deal with that and I’m about over it. I finally got around her to join the lead pack when I had a suspension failure. I felt a vibration just before that but there wasn’t anything I could do. Just really disappointed because we’ve been running really strong all year long and feeling really good about the points and championship, but we feel like we just can’t catch a break. Just really disappointed for the team because we felt we really could have challenged for the win here.”
