Piloting the No. 14 ABC Supply Honda, Takuma Sato was the class of the field for most of the Milwaukee IndyFest but an untimely yellow flag cost him a chance at victory at The Milwaukee Mile Saturday afternoon.
Sato started 15th and dropped back at the start letting the engineers know that the car was loose or suffering from oversteer. When the yellow came out on lap 21 for Simona DeSilvestro’s contact with the Turn 4 wall, Sato pitted on lap 23 to make a wing adjustment and take on fresh tires. The adjustment worked because he began slicing through the IZOD IndyCar field, and by lap 69, he had taken the lead for the first time.
Sato drove away from the field and even after pitting on lap 91, he was in command again by lap 100 of the 250-lap race. He pulled away from all challengers and wasted no time regaining the lead after another stop on lap 157. He was dominating the competition running high or low, whatever he needed to do to get around traffic. The car appeared to be hooked up on rails.
Until it wasn’t. With no warning, the car got loose and wiggled as Sato was coming through Turns 3 and 4 around lap 190. The car drifted into the gray area of the track nearly brushing the wall. Sato kept it off the wall and in the lead although he’d lost quite a bit of his margin to Helio Castroneves who was running second.
He was so quick that he had lapped everyone up to seventh place Scott Dixon. However, whatever had caused that wiggle did not go away. Sato radioed in that he thought something was wrong so the team pitted him early to give him fresh tires on lap 200, 12 laps earlier than they had planned.
Unfortunately, the yellow flag came out on lap 211 for Ana Beatriz’s accident and that untimely yellow stole any chance of victory. Six drivers were able to pit under yellow on lap 213 and come out ahead of Sato on the track. The fact that they had fresh tires at a track where it was difficult to pass sealed his fate.
Moreover, in that final stint, the car was not handling like it had earlier. The crew will be tearing down the car this week to sort out the change in handling which may have been caused simply by the changing track conditions in the latter part of the race.
Despite the setback, Sato gave AJ Foyt Racing its best finish at The Mile since 1988 when Foyt himself finished fifth. It was also Sato’s best finish in four runs at the flat mile oval. The crew turned in four flawless pit stops ranging from nine seconds to 7.4 seconds. Sato’s performance netted him enough points—including the two bonus points for leading the most laps–to move to fourth in the IndyCar standings.
