A.J. Foyt column: Picking up speed

Day two at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway treated the Harrah's team well. We built on a good start yesterday, trimming considerable time from our laps.

This morning, in the first practice session and during qualifying, we picked up a lot of speed on the No. 11 Harrah's car - about seven miles per hour. We'd been searching for more speed throughout the day yesterday, and our crew did a great job last night making a few minor changes that propelled us up the standings. The Las Vegas track is extremely hard on tires and Billy Boat, the driver of the Harrah's car, was having a little trouble keeping a tight line yesterday.

But this morning was a totally different story. We re-worked the front end of the car last night, so that the steering system could hold a tight line despite the stress on the tires. The fine-tuning paid off. The entire pack was fast today, and Billy still managed to qualify in the top 10 - nailing down the number 9 spot with a speed of almost 207 miles per hour.

Now the challenge is going to be to maintain our high level of performance while developing and executing what we think will be a successful race strategy. Obviously, I don't want to give anything away, so I won't go into details about our plans. But we had a good strategy coming into this race, and now that we know exactly how the Harrah's car is going to respond to the conditions here at the speedway, we can wrap up the last few details.

Billy's really excited about the enhanced performance of the car, too. As I mentioned yesterday, a good car is only one element of a successful formula. Billy loves to drive fast and, with confidence in the Harrah's car, I know he'll keep the throttle down tomorrow after the flag drops.

Now that day two is concluded, well be going to Harrah's and the Rio, a Harrah's-owned property for dinner and to meet with a number of customers. For those of you who would like to meet Billy and talk about his chances tomorrow, he'll be signing autographs in Carnaval Court at Harrah's tonight from 9 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. We'll have a Harrah's Indy Racing League car out there, so you can get an up-close look at one of the cars Billy has been racing this season.

I hope to see you at Harrah's or the Rio tonight and I hope you all make it to the speedway tomorrow for the race. Don't forget, it starts at 11:30 a.m. And I'll be back online tomorrow afternoon to let you know how the race went.

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