American race-car driver A. J. Foyt (born 1935), the first driver to have won the Indianapolis 500 four times, captivated both race fans and the general public with his many victories over a racing career that spanned three decades.
Joining Mario Andretti as one of the two best race car driver of the twentieth century according to the Associated Press, A. J. Foyt is the only driver to have won the world's top three professional races: the Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 500, and the 24-Hour LeMans. The only driver to win the Indy 500 four times - in 1961, 1964, 1967, and 1977 - Foyt had 34 race starts and logged a record 11,785 miles during an Indy career that earned him $2,448,000 in prize money. Among his other racing victories prior to his retirement in 1993, Foyt took the cup at the Daytona 500 in 1972, won the 24-hour endurance race at LeMans, France, in 1968, 1983, and 1985, and drove over 40 U.S. Auto Club stock cars to victory. His versatility took him from formula one and Indy cars to stock cars, to sprint cars, midgets, sports cars, and dirt cars, and in 1987 he set the world's closed-course speed record for an Oldsmobile, pushing an Olds Aerotech to 257 miles per hour.
Anthony Joseph Foyt, Jr., was born in Houston, Texas on January 16, 1935. His father, A. J. Foyt, Senior, was co-owner of Houston's Burt & Foyt Garage; he knew his way around race cars because he specialized in working on them. Shadowing his dad at the family garage as a child, young Foyt not only learned how to build cars; he also knew by the time he was five that he wanted to race them. With the help of his father, who build his son's first midget racers, and family friends, he honed his driving skills, and during high school began driving a midget racer on the Midwestern race car circuit. Dropping out of high school in 11th grade, Foyt got a job at Burt & Foyt's Garage and began to apprentice as a driver. In 1953 18-year-old Foyt Jr. - who became known for his trademark cowboy boots and competitive spirit - won his first midget race on the quarter-mile dirt track at Houston's Playland Park.
King of the Indy 500
Foyt is unique among race car drivers, not the least because of his successes at Indiana's Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Joining the U.S. Auto Club in 1957, he made his Indy Car debut that same year, and qualified for Formula One's Indy 500 in 1958. In that race, held on Memorial Day, Foyt finished the race - the most difficult open-cockpit competition to run on an oval track in the United States - in the number-16 spot after a 12th-place start, running 148 laps and earning $2,849. Two years later Foyt won four races, including his first Indy Car race, and earned his first national driving championship. During his first four years racing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Foyt was the youngest driver on the field.
1961 proved to be a banner year for Foyt: it marked his first Indy 500 victory after three previous attempts. Racing at a record 139.13 mph after clocking a qualifying speed of 145.9 mph, he captured a front position after starting in seventh place. Foyt led the race for 71 laps and overcame the setback caused by a late-in-the-race pit stop to take on fuel, barely beating front-runner Eddie Sachs who limped into the pit with a worn tire.
Racing in the Indy 500 became an annual tradition for Foyt, who competed in the Grand Prix event for 35 years in a row, logging 4,909 laps around the two-and-a-half-mile oval track. The first driver to win the race four times, Foyt's winning record has not been beaten, although Al Unser and Rick Mears had it tied as of 2003. He also racked up a record seven Indy Car championships during his career, including those in 1967, 1975, and 1979. He also had his setbacks, however; in 1962, for example, he lost his third-place position after a loose wheel sent him spinning off the track, and four years later, in 1966, he was forced out of the race because of a multi-car accident that occurred shortly after the race start.
In 1964 Foyt swept the U.S. racing field, taking first place in ten out of 13 races. Among those ten victories was his second Indy 500 win, which he claimed after a fifth-position start and an average speed of 147.45 mph, he took the lead in 146 laps from competitors Rodger Ward and Lloyd Ruby. Starting in fourth place in 1967, he took the Indy cup for the third time, leading the field in his Sheraton Thompson Special for 27 laps with a then-record speed of 151.21 mph. Losing rival driver Parnelli Jones after Jones's turbocharged engine blew in the final laps, and closely tailed by Unser, Foyt avoided a pileup during the final lap to gain the two laps needed to win the race.
Foyt repeated his winning Indy 500 performance one last time in 1977, when, at age 42, he drove to victory from a fourth-place qualifying start; the car that carried him to his legendary fourth win at a top speed of 161.331 mph, is now in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway museum. He earned a total of $2,640,576 for his team by competing in the Indy 500, and because he owned - and sometimes built - the cars he drove, was able to keep much of his race winnings. For this reason, Foyt was the first driver to top earnings of $1million in the speedway's long and colorful history. He won his last Indy Car race in 1981, winning his ninth 500-mile event at that year's Pocono 500.
Although Foyt continued to return to Indianapolis every year to race in the 500, after 1977 he never again won the event. After more than three decades, in 1992 he made his last run around the legendary track. Qualifying for the 23rd starting position with a speed of 222.798 mph - over 68 mph faster than his qualifying speed in 1964 - Foyt held a spot in the top 10 during more than half the race to finish in ninth place. That race proved to be Foyt's final Indy 500 run; although he practiced at the speedway the following season, he retired on the first qualifying day. Although his run for the 500 had ended, Foyt did return to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to race in 1994's Brickyard 400, running 156 laps to place 30th in the pack, perhaps confirming his decision to retire.
A Versatile Driver
During a stellar career, Foyt has won 67 races on the Indy track - 15 more than number-two-ranked driver Mario Andretti - and a total of 172 wins in major competitions. His performance, while rarely flagging, has in some years been amazing, as in 1963 when he won his third national championship by capturing three Indy Car events and finishing in eighth place or better in every race he entered. Besides winning his fourth national title and his second Indy 500 in 1964, Foyt also won the July 4th Firecracker 400 stock car race the following year. He won his fifth national Indy car championship in 1967, coming in 80 points ahead of rival Andretti, and his final national championships came in 1975 and 1979. By career end, he had garnered 12 national titles in the sport.
The mid-1960s were amazing years for Foyt as he became the third race-car driver to win races on an oval speedway, a road course, and a dirt track during a single racing season. On the speedway were his Indy Car victories; the road course was the 24-hour endurance race at LeMans he won in June of 1967, joining fellow driver Dan Gurney in a Ford Mark IV as the first U.S. team to win the grueling race. In the 1980s, with his career in Indy Car racing having already crested, he repeated his victory in the 24 hours at LeMans in 1983 and 1985, and was victorious at the 12-hour endurance race at Sebring, Florida in 1985.
A versatile racer who competed in as many as 50 races each year at the height of his career, Foyt succeeded not just in Indy car racing, but also in other forms of motor sports, and chalked up a record 20-plus victories in the U.S. Auto Club (USAC)'s Indy Car, USAC stock car (41), sprint car (28) and midget (20) categories. He also had seven victories in sports cars and two in championship dirt cars, earning the USAC dirt car champion title in 1975. Foyt's astonishing record was enhanced even further when he captured the world closed course speed record for an Oldsmobile in 1987, recording a 257-m.p.h. lap in a Quad-4 powered Aerotech.
Surprising to many is the fact that Foyt was capable of chalking up so many wins in stock-car events. Named USAC stock car champion in 1968, 1978, and 1979, in the last-named year he also won the USAC Indy Car championship and became the first driver to win both titles in the same year. Signing up with the Wood Brothers team in the early 1970s, Foyt also competed on the popular NASCAR stock-car circuit, winning seven NASCAR Winston Cup races, the 1972 Daytona 500 his most notable victory.
A True Son of Texas
Foyt, one of the most recognized race-car drivers of his generation as well as of the twentieth century, was able to sustain a career that combined versatility, competitiveness, and leadership, winning him the respect of his peers. Called "Supertex" by fans referring to his Texas roots, the feisty, outspoken, and charismatic Foyt gave racing fans a cause for excitement, especially during his younger years when he was noted for sometimes exhibiting a volatile temper. As Larry Schwartz commented in an essay posted on ESPN.com, "Foyt has always believed in God, America and himself - and not necessarily in that order. A man of conviction, he is loyal to his friends and indifferent to his enemies. He is brash and blunt. He expected no quarter on the racetrack, and gave none himself. He knew only one speed - pedal to the floor."
Considered one of Texas's "favorite sons," Foyt has won many fans, not only because of his ability as a driver, but also because of his outgoing, colorful personality. Always working from his home base in Houston, he established A. J. Foyt Enterprises and race shop in that city in 1965. Since his retirement in 1993 at the age of 58, he has shifted gears and moved from race car driving to automobile sales, using his hard-won fortune to open A. J. Foyt Honda, which has become the largest auto dealership in his home state. An astute businessman and a self-made millionaire, he also invested money in oil wells and a hotel chain, and also owns several horse and cattle ranches in his home state. Foyt also serves on the board of directors of Riverway Bank and Service Corporation International, the nation's largest funeral business.
Foyt was the first inductee into the Motor Sports Hall of Fame in 1989, and in 2004 became among the first to be honored in the newly established Texas Motorsports Hall of Fame based in Fort Worth. Not surprisingly, retiring as a driver did not end Foyt's involvement in the racing world; he remains active in motor sports, owning several race cars and fielding two teams in the U.S.-based Indy Racing League he helped establish in 1995 as a competitor with the Formula One Grand Prix. He also continues to be an out-spoken proponent of oval-track racing and of maintaining a U.S. presence in a sport that has become increasingly Europeanized. In 1999 he also established A. J. Foyt Racing, a NASCAR team headquartered in North Carolina.
Foyt continues to live in Houston with his wife Lucy, whom he married in 1955. Of Hoyt's four children, Jerry pursued a career in stock car racing, while Larry Foyt drives on the NASCAR circuit as part of Foyt Racing. Beginning with junior dragsters, grandson and Formula One racer A. J. Foyt IV also carries on the family tradition, completing his rookie NASCAR season in 2003. In 1983 Foyt published his autobiography, simply titled A. J. Twenty years later he still held the record for the most Indy Car wins, and remained the only driver in the history of the sport to win seven national Indy Car titles.
Books
Foyt, A. J., and Bill Neeley. A. J., Times Books, 1983.
Libby, Bill, Foyt, Hawthorn Books, 1974.
St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, St. James Press, 2000.
Periodicals
Saturday Evening Post, November 2, 1963.
Sport, January, 1997.
Sports Illustrated, June 1, 1964; June 13, 1966; June 19, 1967; October 12, 1998.
Time, June 9, 1967.
Online
ABC Sports Online,http://www.espn.go.com/abcsports./wwos/foyt/QandA.html (December 6, 2003).
ESPN.com,http://www.espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00014199.html (December 6, 2003).
Foyt Racing: The Official Web site,http://www.foytracing.com (December 6, 2003).
Motor Sports Hall of Fame Web site,http://www.mshf.com/hof/foyt.htm (December 14, 2003).
