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Sunday, September 20, 1998
Boat hoping for another visit to Victory Lane
at Texas track
By MIKE HARRIS
AP Motorsports Writer
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- Billy Boat has made a habit of visiting
Victory Lane at Texas Motor Speedway.
He has been there in each of the first two Pep Boys Indy Racing
League events at TMS, although only one of them is listed in the
victory column of his resume.
At the inaugural Pep Boys Indy Racing League event on the 1-1/2-mile
oval, last year, Boat was celebrating what he and his A.J. Foyt
Racing team thought was a victory when Arie Luyendyk interrupted
the fun.
Luyendyk, a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner, showed up to
complain about the scoring, saying he was the winner. Foyt, known
as much for his temper as for the driving skill that made him
one of the greatest racers of all time, took offense at the intrusion
and slapped Luyendyk, knocking him to the ground.
After IRL officials spent the night auditing the scoring, Luyendyk
was declared the winner and Foyt later was hit with a $25,000
fine.
By the time the IRL returned to race on the 1-1/2-mile Texas
oval in June, Foyt and Luyendyk had made up, but Boat was still
winless. That ended when he passed Greg Ray seven laps from the
end and went on to take the checkered flag.
That one stood.
"Now it's time to win again," said Boat, who heads
into Sunday's 500-kilometer (312-mile) race having little to show
for the five races since that victory.
The euphoria of the win ended at Loudon, N.H., in the race
following the Texas event, when Boat got caught up in a multicar
crash and came away with a broken left leg and pelvis.
Boat, a former sprint car star, had to sit out the next two
races. Since coming back, he has won an IRL record three straight
poles, but he has finished ninth and 12th in the races he has
run.
"We just haven't been running in luck since the win here,"
Boat said. "I've been through this before and you just have
to work your way out of it. Eventually, you get back on top.
"One thing we know, we've got the right equipment to win."
The evidence for that is his victory here as well as teammate
Kenny Brack's IRL record three consecutive victories heading into
Sunday's race.
Foyt is looking for his second championship as a car owner
-- his first came in the IRL's inaugural season, 1996. Brack goes
into the 208-lap race holding a 23-point lead over both defending
series champion Tony Stewart and former Foyt driver Davey Hamilton.
The driver who comes out ahead in the points Sunday will have
a big edge going into the season-finale at Las Vegas Oct. 10.
But even though Boat no longer is part of the championship
chase, Foyt would thoroughly enjoy seeing his two drivers battling
for the win Sunday.
"They don't give nothing away and it would be great to
see them racing each other at the end," he said. "We've
got a young team and now they've had a taste of winning, and they
like it.
"I ain't saying I'd favor one over the other. Whichever
of our cars wins is OK with me."
Stewart will start second in the 28-car lineup, with Hamilton
sixth and Brack 10th.
The first two IRL races here were run under the lights in the
cooler evening hours. Sunday's race will be run in the heat of
the day, with temperatures expected to climb to a humid 90 degrees.
"That's going to make things a little tougher," said
Boat, who won the pole with a record lap of 225.979 mph. "The
drivers can handle the heat OK, but when the track heats up, it
gets slippery. At the speeds we're running, that's going to make
for a long, hard afternoon."
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