AUSTIN, Texas – As the man hired to help guide AJ Foyt Racing back to prominence in the NTT IndyCar Series, the “Eyes of Texas are Upon” Scott Harner.

Those lyrics, of course, belong to the University of Texas-Austin as the school’s famed fight song, carried to the tune of “I’ve been working on the railroad.” But to Harner, who spent 26 years as a key team member at Chip Ganassi Racing before leaving the operation in January, his new role as vice president of operations at AJ Foyt Racing has brought a dose of Texas pride.

Harner is working for a Texas racing legend in AJ Foyt, the first driver to win the Indianapolis 500 four times. The race is also in Texas, about a one-hour drive from the team’s race shop in Waller, Texas.

That places the 53-year-old native of Lafayette, Indiana in a position to uphold the honor and heritage of “The Republic” of Texas in Sunday’s INDYCAR Classic at Circuit of The Americas (COTA).

“As an organization, we just need to do a better job than we did at St. Petersburg,” Harner told NTT INDYCAR Mobile Thursday at COTA. “For us, that is probably a bigger deal because we are in Texas, but our goal every week is to get better.

“That’s what our focus needs to be.”

Harner believes that focus needs to be sharp every race of the season. He believes there is a lot of work to do and a lot that needs to be improved.

“First and foremost is on-track performance,” Harner said. “Hopefully, we can turn that around a little bit.

“There is a lot of ‘new.’ You take a lot of things for granted that you had at a place like that. Chip’s organization was very well established and organized. There are so many great people in that organization that come to work every day and get their job done.

“It’s all about winning on Sunday -- and winning championships.”

Harner worked his first race alongside Foyt in the March 10 Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg and was pleasantly surprised with the demeanor of the 84-year-old racing legend.

“He is there and tuned into what is going on but there are differences between him and Chip Ganassi,” Harner said. “AJ is the first one that notices what is on other cars and roll centers and wing angles. It was happening at St. Pete. We were not nearly as competitive as we needed to be, and he was on top of it back at the trailer.

“He hasn’t lost much.”

Harner hopes to rebuild Foyt’s team into one that can regularly contend with Ganassi and the other top teams in the series.

He was lured to the team by former Ganassi driver Tony Kanaan, who is one of Foyt’s two drivers on the team along with second-year youngster Matheus Leist.

“I’ve been here a short amount of time and the differences are huge from a manpower perspective,” Harner said. “Chip’s team has worked together for a long time and they know what each other wants. Over here, there has been a fair amount of turnover and from what I’ve learned, you need consistency to build something.

“Larry Foyt (AJ’s son and president of the race team) wants this thing to grow. He wants to make it a more competitive organization. To do that, we’re going to have to add some pieces and add some talent and do all of those things.

“I can’t manage this team to the front; it’s going to take us as an organization getting some more resource here and get people to help us become more competitive.”

Harner had all of those pieces at Chip Ganassi Racing, but he concluded he needed to make a change.

“I needed to do something different,” Harner said. “When you wake up in the middle of the night and that is all that is one your mind, it’s time to do something different.

“The success of that organization is extraordinary. We won a lot of championships and the amount of talented drivers that have gone through that organization is huge.”