Long Beach Grand Prix : A.J. HAS THE DRIVE : Foyt Believes He Can Still Win--And He Is Serious About Trying

Want to hear something really funny?

A.J. Foyt still thinks he can win in Indy car racing.

Right, A.J. Foyt, the guy who turned 54 in January.

The same A.J. Foyt who hasn’t won in an Indy car since 1981.

The A.J. Foyt who, in what is snickered about trackside as a monstrous practical joke, was voted most improved driver last season on the Championship Auto Racing Teams circuit.

The very Foyt who some pity as a classic example of a faded star who can’t quite find his way offstage.

Listen, for instance, to Chris Economaki, editor of National Speed Sport News and television commentator on motorsports:

“I can understand his wanting to stay in. I think A.J. just does not know how to retire. I think, inside, he wants to.

“He’s a great, great talent and it’s just a shame to see A.J. and (stock car driver Richard) Petty and (drag racer Don) Garlits, who were unquestionably No. 1 in their respective fields, hang on too long.”

And from Bobby Unser, who used to run against Foyt but now, like Economaki, calls races on television:

“We’ve lost a tremendous amount of the old Foyt. What’s really sad, though, is that so many of the new drivers, and the foreign drivers, don’t know just how good he was.

“But they, and I mean his team, don’t really stay with it the way they used to. They don’t work as hard as they used to at preparation.

“A.J. still has days and times when he’s really fast and really good, when he’s like the old Foyt. And there are some days when his car is good. But it’s a matter of balance. When he’s good, his car is not up to par. And on the days when the car is OK, he’s probably not at his best.”

So, isn’t it a scream that old A.J. still thinks he can win?

Maybe it is. But then again there is nobody in racing today who knows more about winning, or more about what it takes to win, than Foyt.

This, after all, is the same Foyt who has won a record 67 Indy car races, 16 more than Mario Andretti, whom the CART media guide describes flatly as the “greatest race driver of all time.”

He’s the same Foyt who became the first three-time winner of the Indianapolis 500, then became the first four-time winner. Al Unser is the only other.

And he’s the only driver, active or retired, who can say that he has won the Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 500 for stock cars, and, in partnership with Dan Gurney, the LeMans 24-hour endurance classic for sports cars.

The man does know about winning.

And, in Foytian fashion, he doesn’t care what the rest of the racing world thinks. He says he can win again.

Perhaps more telling, he’s acting as if he can. After a disappointing outing last Sunday in the season opener at Phoenix--the waste gate fell off his car’s turbocharger--he fired Bobby Hatch, his newly hired crew chief.

Now that is vintage Foyt.

“I’m back at the race shop now--I sold a major part of my Chevrolet dealership (in Houston)--so I’m with the racing operation every day,” he said. “The last, say, 10 years, I haven’t been. So I can keep an eye on it a lot closer now and I hope I can get it turned around before Indy.

“We let one guy go last week and we’re really short of crew but I’m going to eliminate people until I get the ones I want to keep. That waste gate falling off, I just won’t tolerate stuff like that.”

Under the circumstances, Foyt isn’t looking for a major turnaround here today at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

“I don’t really care that much about street racing and this is only the second time I’ve ever been here,” he said. “It’s a tricky little race track. On a deal like this here, you can’t beat time and laps on it. (Unfamiliarity) puts you at quite a disadvantage.”

In Friday’s first practice session, Foyt’s lack of track time showed. He spun twice in the first three laps.

“The tires let go and I looped that thing,” he said. “First time I’ve done that in a long time. Felt like a fool. Didn’t hit nothing.”

Foyt, of course, wouldn’t mind doing well here, but he’s really thinking of bigger things.

“The big race is Indy,” he said. “I’ll take Indy and they can have all the rest.”

The taking of Indy, though, requires quality equipment, thorough preparation and strong driving, not to mention racing luck.

Foyt has always had his share of racing luck and, if he is as serious as he says about his racing again, it’s a reasonable bet that the preparation will be thorough. “You’ve got to be like (car owner Roger) Penske,” he said. “You’ve got to be ready when you get there and get out there on Monday, the week the track opens, and run it every day. That’s the way to win.”

Funny, that’s the kind of thing everyone else used to say about Foyt’s operation.

Even so, his equipment is suspect to most and his driving skills, once the best in the business, are to many. Foyt demurs on both counts.

His Indy setup will be a new short-stroke Cosworth Ford engine with electronic ignition in a new Lola chassis. The hot setup last season was an Ilmor Chevy engine in a Penske chassis, and it’s expected to be again this year.

“The fuel system, the management system, is the key to the new Cosworth, “ Foyt said. “It’ll accelerate like the Chevy. Otherwise, the Cosworth has always been a good engine.”

And he figures he will be at no disadvantage with a new Lola chassis, which is the same as those driven by the Andrettis, Mario and Michael, and Al Unser Jr. He also figures that the new Penske PC-18s are not some wonder cars.

“You know, Penske’s car is nothing but an ’87 Lola, glorified,” he said. “He hired the engineer who built the ’87 Lola cars, (Nigel Bennett of England), so it’s just a copy of the Lola car.”

Which leaves driving skill.

“I know they’re probably saying, ‘The old man’s over the hump. He can’t do this; he can’t do that.’ I’m saying, ‘You think whatever you want, big boy.’ If I get things lined up, it might be a whole different ballgame.

“And it is my fault that I’ve got this far down but I lost a lot of interest in it the last four or five years. I lost both my father and my mother and I just didn’t have the interest. Last year was the first time since 1977 that I went on the circuit.

“And these guys aren’t volunteering to come over and say, ‘A.J., put this spring on,’ or, ‘Here’s the gear ratios you gotta run.’ Uh-uh. I mean, they don’t feel that safe about me.

“If they think they got me covered so easy, why don’t they say, ‘A.J., this is the gear ratio and here’s the spring. Why don’t you try that?’

“To me, that shows that they’ve still got a lot of respect, ‘cause I give people the information on exactly what I’m running when I know they’re no threat to me.”

He figures on having no problem with today’s higher speeds.

“(Last year) at Pocono, my car ran real good. Rick (Mears) broke early but he would be the only car I felt like I couldn’t handle there. The rest of ‘em, I figured I could outrun.”

And in fact, he did, for a while. He led the first 14 laps of the Pocono 500 before suffering gearbox problems.

“I’m a smarter driver (now),” he said. “I’m not as wild, I don’t take as many chances. I feel more like part of the car.”

All of which sounds good, but also sounds rather typical of a fading athlete.

Foyt, though, has never been typical at anything.

So make it a maybe. Probably he can’t get it together the way he had it in 1960s and ‘70s. But maybe he can. And probably it’s really funny that he’s trying. But maybe it isn’t.