Larry Foyt is banking on new engineers in his team AJ Foyt Racing for a better run in the 2020 IndyCar season.
After a less-than-stellar season for AJ Foyt Racing last year, the team brought in new engineers and new drivers in the form of Charlie Kimball, who gets a full-time seat, with the likes of Sebastien Bourdais, Tony Kanaan and Dalton Kellett going part-time.
Looking ahead to the 2020 IndyCar season, AJ Foyt team leader Larry acknowledged the new crop – especially the engineers – should help dig the team out of the slump they’ve fallen into, where they had just one podium in 2019.
Despite the aim to better, Foyt did recognise that to expect a performance that would ‘set the world on fire’ would be naive, as he instead said that they hope to merely make progress towards their plan for success in the future.
“What’s so tough about the IndyCar series is, once you get into the season, it’s very tough to dig yourself out of a hole,” said Foyt. “It’s not saying it can’t be done. But the summer stretch that we have after Indianapolis and we’re going back-to-back races, and it’s hard to — there’s not a lot of testing at that time, and it’s just very hard to dig yourself if you’ve gone down a wrong path.
“We definitely feel like we headed down a wrong path last year, and the good thing is we’ve got guys coming in we’ve worked with before. Mike Colliver is going to be one of our engineers this year. Mike Pawlowski will be as well.
“Both guys that are coming from places that they’ve seen a lot, they know a lot. So I think we’re going to be able to just kind of reset back to where we feel like is a good spot to then begin our development again.
“So I don’t think we’re going to come out and set the world on fire. That’s not what we’re — that would be great if we can. We have a strategic plan of getting back to point zero and let’s start building again from there.
“So that’s the plan, and it’s not that we think we’re going to struggle like we did last year for sure. I’d be very disappointed if that’s the case. I think the engineers are very reasonable guys that have a good plan, and AJ Foyt Racing is going to go forward.”
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