Best finish so far for Darren Manning at Detroit
Sep 4th, 2007
Darren Manning drove the ABC Supply Dallara/Honda to a fourth place finish in the Detroit Indy Grand Prix at Belle Isle.
It was his best finish of the year so far and during the action packed race he never dropped out of the top nine. For Darren and the AJ Foyt team it was his second top-five and fifth top-10 finish of the season.
Starting eighth on the 2.07-mile street course, Darren passed Sam Hornish for seventh place on the opening lap. Ten laps later he brushed the wall lightly – enough to whitewall the tyres but not hard enough to damage the car.
Darren Manning “The race was looking good at the beginning, but as the track gripped up we just kept getting looser and looser. When we set up the car, we planned for more push but that’s not what we got in the race. We didn’t want to make changes during the race and risk it getting worse. It was hard to tell in practice what we really needed to do but we learned in the race what we really need to improve on. During the race it was a little tricky behind the pace car because you picked up a lot of marbles on the tyres which made the restarts harder and why so many people were crashing. I did get in a little tangle with Danica but it didn’t cause any damage for either of us which was good and we did end up with a good result in the end.”
There were six cautions for a total of 19 laps in the 89-lap race which was shortened by one lap when IRL officials deemed it a timed event due to the mandated 2 hour, 10 minute time limit for all street/road courses.
With one race left in the season, Darren is currently 13th in the standings. He is within two points of 12th place and 18 points out of the top-10.
The final round of the championship will take place on September 9th at the Chicagoland Speedway.
