Unlucky Boat trying to regain winning touch

Thursday, Feb. 18, 1999 | 11:44 a.m.

ine By Mike Harris ASSOCIATED PRESS

Billy Boat is looking for a checkered flag - and a little luck. He's found neither since he pulled into victory lane last June at Texas Motor Speedway.

Boat was knocked from contention in three Indy Racing League events by crashes. He missed two others after he broke his pelvis and left leg in New Hampshire three weeks after his victory.

The first race this year wasn't much better. A deflating tire forced Boat to pit while running among the leaders. He wound up ninth, two laps behind winner Eddie Cheever.

"We haven't had any luck at all," Boat said. "In racing, it takes a certain amount of luck to really have a great year.

"So, for the rest of 1999 we're just looking to try to turn that around and be in the top five every week."

But there have been some positives for the longtime U.S. Auto Club short-track star. He won a series-high six poles in the IRL last season, including the pole for the Indianapolis 500.

But qualifying out front is not what Boat had in mind when he went to work for car owner A.J. Foyt, a four-time Indy winner and the leading driver in open-wheel racing history with 67 victories.

Boat tried to remain upbeat about his finish in the opener last month at Walt Disney World Speedway, where he started with a crash in 1998.

"Overall, it's still better than last year, when I came away from Disney with a bent race car and 21st in the points," he said. "We'll get it turned around at Phoenix."

That's where the second of 11 IRL races will be run March 28.

"You know, Billy looks pretty quiet all the time. But that boy gets just as mad as me when things go wrong like that," said Foyt, long noted for his fiery temperament on and off the track. "I think we're going to get it going right at Phoenix, both of them boys."

The other "boy" is Kenny Brack, who apparently got all the luck Boat missed last year. Brack won three races, his first in the IRL, and took the series championship.

"Billy deserved better than that," the Swedish driver said. "He had good cars and good motors, and things just kept happening to him.

"Somehow, we just got through things without getting touched most of the time. I hope we can still have that kind of luck, because we've got a good enough team to win some races, and so does Billy."

On thing that will change for Boat this year is his schedule. The Arizona native says he will concentrate on racing and testing with Foyt's team, and pass up most of the short-track racing that filled his off weekends in previous years.

"It makes more sense now to do other things when my schedule allows it than to go somewhere to race a midget," Boat said. "I've already done that in my career."

But there's another reason or more specifically, four of them: his children. Trisha, 11, and Chad, 5, are racing quarter-midgets in Arizona. Brooke, 3, and Emily, 2, just like the attention.

"The kids are a lot of it," Boat said. "They are doing a lot of things like racing and playing other sports. It's important that I'm there for those things. I'm just having fun being a dad."

Maybe being more relaxed and less busy during the season will help change his luck.

"I sure hope so," Boat said. "I've been in this game for a long time. I've had great years and I've had bad years."

He says it's all about having a positive attitude.

"You have to keep plucking away, and things will eventually turn around," he said.