What a complete rush it was for the entire Goulian team to compete inside the historical Indianapolis Motor Speedway this last weekend. Many of our family and friends were there to support the team. It was great to be back on home soil.

On Saturday morning, free practice times were looking great, as Michael placed 2nd just .921 seconds behind Martin Sonka. Saturday afternoon’s Qualifying run was almost perfect, but an incorrect level penalty of 2 seconds brought Michael’s time down to 9th place which set him up to fly against Martin Sonka on Sunday’s Round of 14.

On Sunday during the Round of 14, Michael was only .141 seconds behind Martin, which unfortunately bumped him out of the Round of 8.

Michael’s post-race thoughts:

Today at Indy we were ready to rock. In the Round of 14, we flew the perfect lap but the resulting time was slow. We found out after checking our performance data that the power (fuel mixture) setting that we used in Ascot (standing start) and here in Indy all week was very much on the lean side so our engine wasn’t making full power. Personally, I’m very dissapointed because the course flown was perfect under the pressure. We don’t really have an answer yet as to why our consistent setup didn’t give us the proper mixture setting. We will learn as a team and just keep putting down fast lap times.

Transcript of Michael’s post-race interview:

Just being here in Indy and being an American at the Indy speedway is a real pleasure and it’s an honor. It’s one of those places which is a pinch me moment that you’re out there flying inside the speedway so it was really a great week.

Usually you get off the track knowing I was good or bad or whatever. Here the last two days I had the line and today we were looking at the perfect line and I thought what I did was the perfect line and it actually was. For whatever reason I set up the engine they way that we did it in Ascot for a standing start and have been doing it here. But today in this race that meant that the engine was running 3 gallons an hour too lean and it just wasn’t making any power and I did not know it while we were flying so the airspeed that we had versus what we should have had just kept decreasing as the race went on. The line was as good as it could have been, but when the engine is not making any power. I’m actually really quite frustrated and a little perplexed because both in Ascot and in Germany and now here, great lap, great lap, great flying, great flying, great flying, but in this place it didn’t reward us but we’re just going to have to look and learn.