By Dick Mittman
indy500.com

Friday, January 17, 2003

Where else but at a racetrack would you expect to find A.J. Foyt on his 68th birthday and celebrating the start of his Golden Anniversary in big-time auto racing?

That's where he was Thursday, Jan. 16. He was working with son Larry, who was participating in his first NASCAR Winston Cup Series test session for next month's Daytona 500. And in three weeks, he'll be at the Test in the West at California Speedway and Phoenix International Raceway introducing his 18-year-old grandson, A. J. Foyt IV, to the high-speed intricacies of the IRL IndyCar Series.

A.J. Foyt Jr. is one sports legend who never has basked in the glow of his past. He has too much future to worry about.

It was 50 years ago this spring that Foyt, then the same age as his grandson, entered his first midget race in Playland Park in his native Houston. He went despite tears from his mother, Evelyn. He dressed in white pants and a red shirt, and the car that had been the jewel to his eye in his father's garage had a new Offy engine in it.

How long did it take for the legend to start? Well, that night he tied the track record in qualifying - in his first race. The old mark wasn't held by some local hotshot but by Johnnie Parsons, who won the Indianapolis 500 three years earlier.

"I looked at it as something I've always wanted to do," Foyt said Jan. 14 after shepherding son Larry to the 14th fastest speed of the day at Daytona in the Harrah's Dodge Intrepid. "My first race, Red Farmer actually owned the car. He gave me a chance."

Foyt's father's garage drew many of the racing greats of the early 1950s when they came to Houston to race. Young Foyt washed their cars and listened to their stories. He also started listening to the Indianapolis 500 in that garage when he was 12 and fantasizing about being in the cockpit of one of those cars.

"I dreamed about that race when I was a little kid," he said. "I went up to the Indy 500 in '55 with some fellows and I said, 'I hope, man, someday to race here. They said, 'Dream on.'

"My biggest thrill was making that race."

Of course, he also won it a record four times, drove in it a record 35 times, has won it once as an owner, and this year's "500" will be his 45th consecutive race as a participant.

That first year of 1953, Foyt drove on a Texas circuit that included Houston, Austin and Corpus Christi. Then car owner Harry Ross and another friend everyone called "Jelly Belly" took him to a sprint car race in Minot, N.D. He's never been back to that outpost of the racing world, but the sprints were the next step up the ladder as he began running the IMCA circuit. At the State Fair in St. Paul, Minn., he set the regulars on their ears with his speed and skill.

Foyt didn't do it for money. He remembers winning midget features and departing the track with a $20 payoff.

"One of the big races I won was at Salem (Ind.,)," he said. "That's when mechanics like Clint Brawner began thinking that if I was crazy enough to run those high banks, I could run for them."

Foyt was getting closer to Indy. The next step was racing in the Night Before The 500 midget shows at the 16th Street Speedway across the street from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

A.J. had changed tires for Jimmy Reese, an Indianapolis 500 regular of the time, after meeting him at his father's garage. One night at the 16th Street oval, A.J. was working with the weight jacker on his car when Reese strolled up and told to him to put more weight in the right-side steering. Foyt was a little befuddled until he found out Reese was telling him to push harder on the throttle.

Few ever pushed harder than Foyt over the ensuing years.

He arrived at the Speedway four days early for his first Indianapolis 500 in 1958 and told the officials he was going to drive for Al Dean. Officials informed Foyt that wasn't a fact, and Foyt wasn't given a pit pass until his car and team showed up.

"It was a beautiful place 50 years ago, and it's more beautiful today," Foyt said about the Speedway.

By 1960, he had reached the top of his game. He won races and championships galore. He won the Indianapolis 500 in 1961 - and ate 10-cent White Castle hamburgers for dinner afterward - and won at Indy again in 1964 and 1967, then 10 years later won again. He won Le Mans with Dan Gurney, the Daytona 500, the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring.

On the morning of Indy Pole Day in 1993, Foyt still planned to race in the "500" for the 36th time. But suddenly all of that changed when his second driver, Robby Gordon, crashed in practice. Foyt stepped to Tom Carnegie's public-address microphone and tearfully told the fans he was retiring. There wasn't a dry eye in the enormous and packed grandstands.

But he only retired as a driver. Kenny Brack presented with a fifth Indy victory in 1999, as an owner. Now he looks for No. 6 with his grandson and teammate Airton Dare placing that right-side steering to the throttle.

"It's been a fun career," Foyt said. "Someone asked me yesterday if there was anything I would change in my life and I said, 'Not a damn thing.' I really mean that.

"It's been a wonderful life. I couldn't have had a better life. I made a good living, but if I had known I was going to live this long, I would have kept in better shape."

He jokes that he is 50 pounds overweight and has helped make Houston the fattest city in America.

"That last wreck did it for me," he said of his serious accident in 1990 at Elkhart Lake, Wis. "I'm old, all broke up and can't get around at the end of the day."

His son and grandson being heavily involved in racing keeps Foyt from looking too much in the rear-view mirror. He put A.J. IV - called Anthony - in the IRL Infiniti Pro Series last summer, and the youngster won the inaugural championship much to the surprise, particularly, of grandpa.

A.J. IV's 19th birthday occurs on this year's Indianapolis 500 Race Day, May 25.

"Really, all he lives for is driving," the proud grandfather said. "That's all he wants to do. I've got to get him in college.

"But life is short. If something happens, he's doing what he wants to do. If he was in a car wreck in school, I would regret it more."

Larry, too, dreams of driving at Indy, and A.J. Foyt said that's still a possibility. But the father notes he owes it to his son to provide him with a good rookie ride in the Winston Cup Series. He has named veteran Mike Chase to run Larry's operation, and Butch Lamoreux has moved from engineer to crew chief.

"I kind of threw him over there to the wolves, which was not fair," A.J. Foyt said. "That's why I owe it to him. Now Anthony, he says, 'Papa, I'm an open-wheel driver.' There is nothing like open-wheel cars where you go fast."

Foyt feels it is easier for young drivers to make it to Indy much quicker than when he was their age. First, no driver 50 years ago was allowed to compete until he was 21 although some, like Troy Ruttman and Jim Rathmann, lied about their ages.

"Back then you had to be with the right mechanic and have that feel in your butt," he said. "Now it's all computerized. I can see what Anthony does in a tenth of a second, what the springs did, so forth. We never had that before. We also didn't have those private jets. We had to drive to the races."

And then there's a third reason.

"The guys don't want to work like we did in the old days," Foyt said.

That's the kind of man Foyt's father, old Red Farmer, Harry Ross, Jelly Belly, Jimmy Reese and the rest of those hard cases of yesteryear helped to mold. They made him into a racing legend who continues to build on his fame by still working harder than the next guy a half-century later.

"You don't realize what you're doing until it is over," he said.

And when that will be, who knows? So, happy birthday, A.J.

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