It's hard not to root for RHR. His 4th place performance for A.J. Foyt at Mid-Ohio was tough, but helping his mother fight cancer is an even greater challenge.

After the Kentucky race I was really looking forward to getting back to Mid-Ohio where I made my IRL IndyCar Series debut in 2007 with Rahal-Letterman. Mid-Ohio is a special place to me for a few reasons. I remember attending an IndyCar race there in '92 or '93 with my Dad just as I was getting into racing karts. Fast forward seven years and I was back at Mid-Ohio racing in the Skip Barber Formula Dodge Series, then two years later the Barber Dodge Pro Series, so I've spent my fair share of summer days at Mid-Ohio.
 

My rookie year in Champ Car I qualified 2nd on the front row next to Paul Tracy and wound up finishing 3rd, after losing one position in the pits. Then you throw my debut for the Rahal-Letterman Team in the mix and you can see why this track is a special place for me and my career.

I arrived in Columbus Tuesday night ahead of the race for a Wednesday appearance at the Anna, Ohio Honda Engine Plant. I really enjoy doing these Honda appearances. All the folks at Honda take so much pride in the products they produce and they see us drivers as representatives of all their hard work, so it's great to take the day to meet the employees and their families. Thursday I did an appearance for IZOD at the Macy's in Columbus. That evening, Beccy and I went to see a movie, "Funny People", which we liked.

Friday we were finally getting down to business. As the first session approached I noticed AJ hadn't arrived yet. Soon after, we learned there had been some problems with AJ's plane at 35,000 feet, I guess they lost fuel pressure to one of the engines and had to do return to the airport to reset some of the systems.

Headed into our first session of the weekend we knew the guy calling all the shots and changes to the car was not going to make it. Vitor Meira and I sat down before the session and came up with a rough plan. I'll never forget coming into the pits after my first proper run and asking Vitor on the radio "Ok, whadda you want to do now?" It was pretty funny. I asked for some specific changes and we made the car better as the session went on, consistently running in the top ten. About three quarters of the way through the session AJ showed up and Vitor relinquished his temporary
 team manager position. I was pretty happy with the car from the first session and we just tweaked on it as we went, chasing some high speed push with turn after turn of front wing combined with some spring changes. Almost everything we did slowly but surely made the car better.

For Saturday's practice session we did much of the same and ended up P10, things were going in the right direction. We made some small adjustments for qualifying and I knew the rest would be up to me. Qualifying at Mid-O is fun - you really have to take that next step of commitment to entry speed. In the first round of knock-out qualifying we were P6, so we just squeaked in. For the next round we were putting up some great numbers and with just 15 seconds to go we were still in the Firestone Fast Six. As the checker flag came out, Franchitti bumped me out by about fifteen one hundredths of a second, which meant we would be starting 7th. I was disappointed we weren't advancing, but I wasn't going to be greedy, this was the best start for both the ABC Supply Team and me this year. We could definitely go to work from 7th on Sunday.

Saturday night Beccy and I went to dinner with Vitor. The humor in it was that we were staying in Mt. Gilead about half an hour from the track in a little Best Western, with no restaurants for miles. . The gentleman at the front desk of the hotel recommended a restaurant about five miles away so off we went. As we pulled up we saw it was an Amish restaurant. Vitor jumped out of the car and walked in to take a look and there was just a few men in rocking chairs staring at him, he was back in the car in about three seconds flat, saying "go go go", hilarious. . We ended up driving 30 miles to an Outback.

Sunday morning warm-up went to plan, we ran on black tires and checked our fuel mileage numbers, practiced some pit stops, we were ready to go racing. After the driver's meeting Beccy told me she had read Paul Tracy's blog and PT was concerned that he was going to be so fast he'd get stuck behind the 'Foyt car' in the race. Funny thing is I thought nothing of it until about halfway through the race after a yellow when he was right up behind me on a re-start. More on that later.

As we lined up for the race it was HOT, actually the hottest day of the year for Ohio at 93 degrees, but the humidity was the killer, it was just plain damp. I had a pretty good start to the race as I raced side-by-side with Tony Kanaan for the first three corners, before I had to give up the outside line and fell to 8th. Just as we completed the first lap I had a huge run on Tony headed to the keyhole turn 2 and got my nose inside at the beginning of the brake zone. TK braked too deep and went off into the kitty litter, but fortunately was able to continue. From there I just concentrated on keeping pace with Helio in front of me and saving as much fuel as possible. I was pretty happy to be turning the lap times we were turning while saving quite a lot of fuel. We were hanging right there with the leaders. Therace went green for quite a bit, which was nice. Mid-Ohio allows you to get into a good rhythm and I was definitely in one.
 

The first set of stops came under green and I was surprised to see Helio peel off two laps before we did and I was hoping we'd be able to get in front of him once it cycled through. I came out of the pits right in front of him, but his tires had two laps of heat in them and mine were stone cold, so he was able to get back by at the exit of turn two. Once again I settled into a rhythm keeping pace with Helio. About 10-15 laps into the stint Helio lost the rear of the car in the tricky section at turn 4. Trust me it's easy to lose the rear of the car in that area. That brought the yellow out, which bunched up the field and allowed PT to pull up behind me for the re-start. I was pretty motivated and I'll have to say I thoroughly enjoyed immediately putting a big gap between us and then extending the gap lap after lap to the point where I was no longer able to see him in my mirrors.

The last stint of the race was one of the toughest I have had. We chose to go with a new set of black primary tires rather than a set of used red alternate tires. We were concerned the heat cycle in the red tires from qualifying might result in less grip than a new set of blacks, and after accomplishing so much to that point we weren't willing to gamble on the used reds. As I left pit lane I saw AGR had bolted on a new set of reds to Mutoh's car. The AGR cars had come and tested Mid-Ohio recently their four cars had been fast all weekend, so I knew it was going to be a fight to the end. Mutoh on red's vs. me on blacks.

On the out-lap I could tell Mutoh was hooked up on the reds tires and his grip was coming in much faster than my blacks, he was haulin' ass posting the third fastest lap of the race chasing me. I kept my head down running a qualifying pace every lap of the remainder of the race. I mean I was really hanging it on the ragged edge to keep him behind. AJ Foyt Racing doesn't use the variable rate rack and we have a fair amount of castor dialed into the car, so it was physical every lap to say the least. I was so focused with putting together perfect laps and pushing so hard, I didn't drink from my water supply in the car, which by the end of the race left me pretty dehydrated.

Hediki and my battle for 4th was producing the quickest laps of the race at that time, other than Dixon who was in a class by himself that day, as we were catching Franchitti and Briscoe by almost half a second a lap some laps despite the fact they had their own fight for 2nd going. We finished 4th, which was the team's highest finish of the season and my second highest finish of the year behindthe 2nd place in St. Pete. This result was a just reward for the team and well deserved, especially considering our title sponsor ABC Supply had over 600 guests in attendance. In addition ABC's CEO, David Luck, was there cheering us on...

Two days after the race we were in Sonoma for a one day test in preparation for this weekend's race. From there I hitched a ride to Houston with AJ on his jet. My Mom had made the trip to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston from Ft. Lauderdale, but she wound up in the ER her first night there. My Mother was diagnosed just over one year ago with advanced stage 4 colon cancer and has been on numerous chemotherapy treatments ever since.

It's been a long tough road with lots of complications and side-effects and it suddenly became tougher in Houston. I was there with her for five straight days in the hospital and unfortunately we didn't get the best of news. On Monday she was in for more surgery and by Monday night we were given the word that she could be discharged on Wednesday. There was only one problem, we were 1,200 miles from home and she was far too weak and in way too much pain to fly commercial or go home by car. It looked like she was going to be stuck in a hospital bed for the foreseeable future in Houston. That was until I spoke to AJ Foyt Tuesday morning. He blew me away with his generosity; he offered to fly my Mom home on his Hawker 800 jet. I honestly didn't know what to say, I couldn't express my gratitude. I ran to my Mom's hospital room and told her the news, she began to cry immediately. This morning AJ had the plane flown from Waller, TX to Houston's Hobby airport just so she didn't have to take the hour car ride out of town. When she arrived at the hangar the plane was ready to go immediately, no waiting, amazing. She wanted so badly to go home and I couldn't be happier to report she made it home safely today. THANK YOU SO MUCH AJ!!

Now it's off to Sonoma for another race weekend, as we look to continue or momentum from Mid-Ohio. You can bet I'll be on the red-eye after the race Sunday, cross country to Ft. Lauderdale to be with my mother as we continue our fight.

Ryan