Andretti Quickly Tires of Mind Games

The course is two long straights, connected by two sets of turns, so every lap is a matter of racing through the corners, then relaxing at 180 mph or so.

Then racing again, then relaxing again.

In relaxation, there is time for wool-gathering, and these were Michael Andretti’s approximate thoughts on Lap 51 Sunday in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach:

“What’s that flapping on my left-front tire?”

And on Lap 52:

“I need to make a pit stop to change that tire, but if I do, I’ll have to stop again later and then I can’t win the race and maybe I can’t even make the top 10.”

And on Lap 53:

“You know, if I crash, I sure hope it isn’t on this long straight at 180 mph.”

And on Lap 54:

“I sure would like to see a caution flag.”

And on Lap 55:

“Ow, man, that hurt.”

Andretti did several things you aren’t supposed to be able to do Sunday, and at least one thing he shouldn’t have done. The “shouldn’t” cost him money, points and pieces of the race car when the tire blew on the front straightaway at about 170-180 mph, throwing him into the left wall near where Shoreline Drive goes into Turn 1 and ending his day prematurely.

He was running third at the time. He should have been running for the pits. Because he wasn’t, he finished 21st.

“I made a mistake,” Andretti admitted. “I thought, or maybe I hoped, that it was just one of the laminations on the tire. We had about eight laps to go until a pit stop [on which he would have been able to add enough fuel to finish], and the tire pressure on the telemetry said the pressure was good.

“It was a case of hang on and hope. We were hoping for a caution flag. We got one . . . but I caused it.”

Andretti had started sixth on the grid Sunday and had worked his way up quickly, once by passing Adrian Fernandez on the hairpin turn that feeds onto Shoreline.

You aren’t supposed to be able to pass on the hairpin.

“We weren’t running that well on the straight, so I had to get out of the turn fast,” he said.

It worked once, so he tried it again, but this time ran onto the wheels of PJ Jones, Andretti’s car first getting airborne, then slamming hard onto the street, then being hit from behind by Bobby Rahal.

Jones pitted, changed a tire and eventually finished 11th, getting a couple of points for the Dan Gurney team.

Andretti stayed on the track, though Goodyear says the slam bent suspension parts and contributed to the tire’s disintegration.

“I don’t know,” Andretti said. “I do know I ran one of my quickest laps right after that.”

And ran 29 more laps until running his last lap and bemoaning his fate.

“We would be leading the standings if we didn’t have the problem in Japan and Long Beach,” he said. “The potential is certainly there to lead the PPG Cup. Now we just have to buckle down and get rid of this bad luck.”

Or bad decisions. Andretti had problems with a pit stop in Japan and eventually ran out of fuel. He finished 14th with what he called the best car on the track.

On Sunday in Long Beach, he ran longer on a tire than the tire would run.

And took the blame.

“Ultimately the decision is mine,” he said of failing to pit and saving the car. “It’s my butt out there on the race track.”

And in the wall.