Moraes and Viso hoping to outrun bad luck

Mario Moraes walked away from his car after hitting the wall last Sunday in Newton, Iowa. Moraes has seen his races end early after contact in four of the season's seven events. At least two IndyCar Series drivers came to Richmond International Raceway this weekend desperately seeking a break.

One is still searching.

Mario Moraes, the second-year driver for KV Racing Technology, has seen his races end early because of contact in four of the season's seven races. Last night's SunTrust Indy Challenge was the circuit's eighth of 17 races.

Friday's practice and qualifying at RIR didn't jump-start his racing weekend as he had hoped. Only 17th fastest in the first practice session, the Brazilian qualified 19th in the 20-car field with a speed of 160.895 MPH, about 6.5 MPH slower than pole-sitter Dario Franchitti.

Making matters worse, the 20-year-old had the only incident in Friday night's practice session when he did a quarter-spin coming off Turn 4, making light contact with the outside retaining wall on the frontstretch.

"I think I'm having the worst weekend of my life," he said Friday night. "I think we need to have a big change for [Saturday]. We tried a lot of stuff today [Friday], and it didn't work."

A look at his Iowa race typifies how his season has gone.

After recording his first top-10 finish of the season just two races prior at the Milwaukee Mile, Moraes was caught up in another driver's spin. Through no fault of his own, his day ended after 52 laps. He was also accessed a blocking penalty earlier in the race.

"I was behind Raphael Matos and he spun in front of me," Moraes said after the Iowa race. "I tried to avoid him, and when I did that, I slid into the wall. It is very disappointing because I think even with the penalty we could have had a good finish today."

While E.J. Viso's luck has been much worse than Moraes' thus far -- he has yet to finish a race this year -- perhaps things are about to change.

After taking advantage of a recent test session at RIR, Viso qualified seventh Friday evening with his lap of 164.629 mph. The result was Viso's best oval qualifying effort in his two IndyCar seasons.

"I think we did a good job. This little achievement shows that testing is very important, and obviously the development we did here a couple weeks ago is paying off right now," the native of Caracas, Venezuela said.

"It's also important to qualify close to the front at this track, being one of the most difficult tracks to overtake in the championship and being such a criminal track last year in the race. Obviously, you want to be as close to the front as possible to have fewer risks in front of you."

At the RIR test, Viso discussed his misfortune so far.

"It's been very difficult," he said. "We've showed that we are fast. At Long Beach, running fourth and Scott [Dixon] took me out. Been unlucky at other places. It happens in racing, keep our head up. Our day is coming, and we all know it. Most of them [the non-finishes] have been out of our hands."

HVM Racing owner Keith Wiggins said Viso has managed to stay positive despite yet finishing a race.

"I think the frustration has been shared," he said. "E.J. is pretty good at bouncing back. It probably takes us longer [to bounce back] than even him. You just have to get on with it and come back another day.

"We've had some low spots, and you don't need to say the words, you both feel pretty bad about it. You pick yourself up, and E.J.'s pretty resilient. Once the green flag drops for practice, he does the job, and that's what you need."

Contact Shawn Fenner at (804) 649-64120 or .