5/28/2018
James Davison
Not Davison's day at Indianapolis
An anti-rollbar problem led to an early exit for James Davison at this year’s Indianapolis 500.
Davison battled an ill-handling Dallara-Chevrolet and was running off the pace when his car was rear-ended by the car driven by 2017 Indianapolis winner Takuma Sato.
Both entries were forced out of the race with Sato classified 32nd and Davison 33rd.
“We had the rear anti-rollbar adjuster jam on, it was our worst nightmare,” Davision told Speedcafe.com.
“I wasn’t able to change the balance and as you can see, the cars are very difficult to drive this year, added with the hot temperatures today.
“When you have a situation where you’re holding onto a car and the balance isn’t in the window, it can go from bad to worse like that.
“Obviously, I wanted to not spin the car by myself and I tried to stay out of the way of everyone.
“When you get pushed up in the marbles, your speed drops even more and Taku just couldn’t slow down and avoid me.
“I feel for him and his team getting caught up in that. We wanted no part in it also.”
Davison said he tried to overcome the jammed anti-rollbar but was lapping around 15mph (24km/h) off the pace before the Lap 46 incident.
“We tried some tyre pressure changes with the right front trying to induce understeer but that didn’t fix it.
“Whenever I got close to any other car, my car was super loose and I had to read the warning signs.
“I tried pushing the envelope a couple times but every time I did it, I was getting closer and closer to spinning.”
Davison spent most of his time at Indianapolis this year on the back foot after a practice crash left him in jeopardy of failing to qualify.
But he rebounded strongly and was one of the stars of Pole Day, increasing his qualifying speed by 2mph to improve from 33rd to 19th.
“I’m still proud of this Foyt/Byrd/Hollinger/Belardi team for sticking with it and overcoming the adversities we faced,” Davison said.
“We weren’t in a position to win this year but our aim was to hang in there and do the best we could. We didn’t expect to face the adversity of the ant-roll bar today, but that’s motorsport. There are thousands of variables and everything has got to go right for any driver to be in victory lane."
“It just wasn’t our year.”
Submitted By: James Davison
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