A.J. Foyt Is No Politician, but He’s People’s Choice

For almost 30 years, Anthony Joseph Foyt has dominated the champ car racing scene, winning a record four Indianapolis 500-mile races and posing a threat as an also-ran.

“A.J., A.J., A.J.,” is the crowd clamor when the fiesty Texan walks down pit row. He is a racing legend.

Foyt can be testy at times and, when he wants to, charming on other occasions. He is a down home country boy who can walk into a gourmet restaurant and order pork chops. Foyt is a free soul, nobody gives him orders and if auto racing ever becomes too much for the 50-year-old driver there’s always a second profession he loves, horse racing.

Several years ago, somebody asked Foyt about NASCAR driver Richard Petty’s son Kyle becoming involved in auto racing and Foyt replied he wished it was his own son behind the wheel.

Although a relative newcomer to horse racing, Foyt is serious about the sport. He and his son, Tony, have a stable of 50 race horses on a 1,500- acre ranch in Hockley Tex., 35 miles from Houston. Several years ago they had a good season at Oaklawn Park, Keeneland and Churchill Downs when their horses won 26 races.

In 1983, horse racing’s famed Calumet Farm, sponsored one of Foyt’s Indy cars.

A man of many racing helmets, Foyt has won other events in the sport, including the Daytona 500 stock car race and co-drove Dan Gurney to the checkered flag in a 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Foyt has won the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, 1964, 1967 and 1977. He captured the Indy car championship a record seven times and won 67 champ car races. His closeest rival is Mario Andretti with 43 victories.

To this day, Foyt is probably the best known name in auto racing around the world. He has raced in Canada, Mexico, Europe and New Zealand. He built and raced his Coyote for years, but now relies on other makes to carry him around the race track.

Will racing ever see another Coyote?

“I doubt it,” says Foyt. “You know the last one was the one I got hurt in after we sat on the front row at Indy in 1981. We never tested it, just went there and qualified it. Then at Pocono I won the 500 with a March.

“At Michigan, I went back in the Coyote and we were running real good when we broke something and I hit the wall.