Latest Injuries Won’t Stop Foyt : Auto racing: Driver expected to resume career in four to six months. Doctor says ‘He’s perfectly OK from the knees up.’

A.J. Foyt will be approaching 56 before he can drive a race car again, but already he is chaffing at having to wait for his injured feet and legs to recover from multiple fractures suffered in an Indy car race crash Sunday at Elkhart Lake, Wis.

“One of the first things he asked me was how long it would be before he could get back in the car,” said Dr. Terry Trammell, director of medical services for Championship Auto Racing Teams, who is attending to Foyt at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. “He’s already talking about commitments to his testing program the first part of the year.

“I told him it would be four to six months before he would be ready to drive again, but I don’t see any reason why he shouldn’t be 100% by that time. He’s perfectly OK right now from the knees up.”

Foyt suffered a broken left heel, dislocated left knee and broken left leg near the knee, and a dislocated right ankle and cuts to the bone in the right leg.

“The damage is similar to what Scott Pruett had, and he’s about ready to go racing again,” Trammell said of the Indy car driver who was injured in a testing accident in March in Florida.

Foyt underwent a 4 1/2-hour operation Sunday night at Milwaukee County Medical Complex and was flown Monday to Indianapolis. He is expected to remain in the hospital for 10 days to two weeks before returning home to Houston.

Foyt’s accident occurred during the 24th lap of the Texaco-Havoline 200 on the fastest section of the four-mile, 11-turn Road America course. He was racing side-by-side with Dominic Dobson when he failed to make a turn and went off the track into a dirt embankment. The impact crushed the front end of his Lola, and it took 15 minutes for CART course workers to cut him from the car. The race was stopped for 90 minutes and eventually was won by Michael Andretti.

“We were pretty much drag racing up the straight, A.J. on the inside and me on the outside as we came on the turn,” Dobson said. “I figured if he braked in his normal spot, he’d have the line and I’d tuck in behind, but all of a sudden I saw he was going in awful deep and then I realized he had a problem.

“The last thing I saw was him flying off the road. When you’re in a car, it looks like the edge of earth there. He must have been going close to 175 or 180 when he hit. I figured he must have lost his rear brakes and locked up his front ones.”