After sipping a couple of mint julips and enjoying the evening sun setting off in the distance following another night of close racing at Kentucky Speedway, the notebook's full of thoughts about Saturday envening's race.............where should I start?
~~Another AGR episode of "The Good, The Bad and the downright Weird." For Andretti-Green Racing, the race was an up-and-down affair; on the good side, 2 AGR cars finished 1st(Kanaan) and 4th(Andretti); for Kanaan, it was his 4th win of the season and has effectively tightened up what was a 2-horse race into a 3-horse race....for Marco, it was his 2nd-straight top-5 on an oval(which certainly helps considering the absolutely abysmal 1st-half of the season he had).....now for AGR drivers Danica Patrick and Dario Franchitti, the day didn't go quite as planned.......for Patrick, another shot at a win quite literally blew out from her following a bad chain of events; on her final stop of the night, Patrick's crew decided not to change tires(about half of the teams' opted to double-stint tires during the race..........
![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
) and on the outlap, she spins out while exiting pitlane. Considering what happened last race, her team looked at the telemetry coming from the tires and opted
not to bring her back in......bad mistake; on the next lap at about 100-105 mph, the right-rear blows out and Patrick becomes a passenger on what had to have been a scary trip to the outside wall(note......it could have been worse; her car missed hitting one of the track safety vehicles en route to the wall). The downright weird part of the team's evening goes to the Scotsman, who for the second consecutive week, saw his car flip after hitting another car(what happened is he ran into the left-rear of Kosuke Matsuura's car after the checkered flag flew, sending Franchitti's car into a 360-flip before landing right-side up and hitting the turn 1 wall......thankfully, Franchitti escaped injury but was visibly angry at himself for what happened)
~~Career best for Quattro and the Vision boys. Of Vision Racing's three drivers, Tomas Scheckter, Ed Carpenter and A.J. Foyt, IV, which one do you think finished 3rd last night?
--Scheckter.....nope; he finished 5th
--Carpenter.....uh-uh; he was 7th
--Quattro.........ding-ding-ding; we have a winner!
No, that's not a typo, for A.J. Foyt, IV not only finished 3rd last night(career-best finish) but for once in his IndyCar career was in position to actually win; it was a stellar night for the team, as well; for the first time, they saw all 3 teams make the top-10..........
~~From the seen and heard files..............whilst roaming the paddock at Kentucky, I did hear a few interesting bits of news..........
--It appears Roth Racing will not be running presumptive 2007 IPS champion Alex Lloyd at Chicagoland: Lloyd wanted to test for the team prior to committing but the team wasn't able to set a date that either side liked, so Lloyd is out for the race....ironically, the team's rumored to have tapped former IndyCar Series driver P.J. Chesson for the ride, so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out
--With all the crash damage from Michigan, Aguri-Panther Racing announced that an upcoming test w/IPS driver Hideki Mutoh at Infineon has been cancelled; the team reiterated, though, that Mutoh will test for them at Chicagoland and will drive a third Aguri-Panther car there for the 2007 ICS season finale
--Representatives from both Johnson Controls and Optima Batteries were seen in the IndyCar paddock during the weekend; rumor has it that both companies will be sponsoring future ICS events and that one of the teams could be sponsoring an IndyCar team in 2008
Top-10 from an interesting and weird Kentucky.......................................
1st} #11 Tony Kanaan......................................200 laps
2nd} #9 Scott Dixon.........................................-1.746 sec
3rd} #22 A.J. Foyt, IV......................................-2.107 sec
4th} #26 Marco Andretti...................................-2.300 sec
5th} #2 Tomas Scheckter................................-2.366 sec
6th} #8 Scott Sharp........................................-2.649 sec
7th} #20 Ed Carpenter....................................-2.815 sec
8th} #27 Dario Franchitti.................................-6.284 sec
9th} #3 Helio Castroneves...............................-1 lap
10th} #4 Vitor Meira.......................................-1 lap