MOTOR RACING / JIM HODGES : Foyt Down, Not Out of Indy Picture

It was a late September Sunday in the rolling Kettle-Moraine country of southeastern Wisconsin and A.J. Foyt was tooling down the nearly mile-long straight at Elkhart Lake’s Road America, shifting into fifth gear as he drove alongside Dominic Dobson. Ahead was the first of the course’s 11 turns, a 90-degree right-hander, and Foyt pushed down the brake pedal to slow the car.

Nothing happened.

In an instant, he had to decide whether to exit the course into tall grass at the end of the straight or find a way to slow the car enough to negotiate the turn. This, at 180 m.p.h.

Trying to turn the car offered the possibility of flipping it, so he aimed for a gravel shoulder that might slow him. He went through that, continued over a little hill and into the grass. Somewhere along the way, the nose piece of his Lola-Chevrolet broke off, and the race car suddenly had become a $350,000 shovel, with Foyt’s feet at its point. It dug a trench about 12 feet long and six to eight inches deep before it stopped.

There was fear for his life and, once that was quelled, for his limbs. There was not, says A.J. Foyt, an internal discussion as to why a 55-year-old man who has won nearly everything there is to win in auto racing was still riding anything other than a limo to the office or a pickup at a Texas ranch.

“I was in such pain, I couldn’t think of anything else,” he says now. “It’s one of the few times I’ve been in an accident when I haven’t been unconscious that I should have been.

“I had to get out of the car. I was trying to pull my legs up.”

There was no pull. Worse, for a while, Foyt thought there were no legs. He had become twisted in the cockpit--giving an idea of the severity of impact, since the cockpit is small and Foyt is not--and his right leg was on the left side of the car. His legs seemed to end just below the knee.

“When I got there,” says Terry Trammell, director of medical services for the Horton Safety Team, “my immediate concern was that he was all right . . . that he was breathing and there was nothing life-threatening.

“Then I looked down and saw his knees, which had become twisted around. The right foot was on the left side of the car, and I started dog-paddling in the dirt until I felt bone. I thought his left foot was possibly severed.”

Instead, it was buried; dirt had cushioned the blow. Now, several operations later for a dislocated left knee and broken left foot, Foyt, between complaints of life in a hospital, is talking of the future.

“Laying on my butt all day is not A.J. Foyt,” he says by phone from a sixth-floor room at Memorial Hospital in Indianapolis, where he has had several operations. “I feel I’m going to be back 100%, and if I didn’t feel I was going to be 100%, I would retire.

“Laying on my . . . in this bed is driving me crazy. If I felt I was just in the way on a race track, I would quit.”

It’s a thought others have had for him, which is motivation enough to keep driving. The challenge of being told you can’t do something motivates young children to defy their parents and middle-aged Texans to order a car for the 1991 season. You get the idea that, if A.J. Foyt saw a newspaper article that said he could never walk a tight rope, he would look up Ringling Bros. and demand center ring.

But, he says, 1991 will be the last. It was planned before the accident, and merely nearly losing his legs in tall grass just off a race course seems insufficient reason to alter a 35th year in Indy cars. He will retire from driving after another season, says Foyt, but will continue to field a team with another driver.

His final season, though, probably will not be a complete one. With lengthy therapy ahead, cars will be prepared with racing’s Holy Grail in mind. Not Australia, CART’s first scheduled race in 1991, nor Phoenix or Long Beach.

“Indianapolis is certainly my goal,” Foyt says. “It’s where I think I can do my best. I might run a race or two before that, but Indianapolis is my goal.”

He has won there four times, more than any other driver except Al Unser, who has matched Foyt’s record, and finished sixth there this year, his best showing of the season. It is the place of dreams for most drivers, but to Foyt it is an obsession.

It was thought that if he were going to make any more Indy noise, this was the season. He had Chevrolet power, and Chevy has won all but one of CART’s races the last two seasons. He had Lola, the chassis of choice. The combination was enough to lure him back full-time after years of part-time participation during which, he says, his heart just wasn’t in racing. His father had died and his father had been the man to count on in the pit when he won many of his 67 Indy car races.

But, Foyt says, he had neither Chevy nor Lola long enough.

“We didn’t have time to do testing,” he says. “I’d like to see someone, anyone, do as well as we did (under the circumstances). I think we did well for just taking the car out of the truck and going racing.

“Really, this year was our testing.”

And next year lends the opportunity to reap the benefits. All it takes is for the driver to get out of the wheelchair, off the crutches and back into the race car.

There really is nothing left for Foyt to accomplish.

“The technology (of racing) had left us, and I just want to get caught back up with the technology when I retire,” he says. “I have nothing to prove. I just enjoy racing.”

“Still,” he admits, and you sense he is grinning, “I know some people think I’m crazy.”

Trammell has joined in the effort of getting Foyt ready for one more Indianapolis 500.

“By the end of March or early April, he’s going to be around,” Trammell says. “He’s going to be sore, and brake pressure is going to be a problem. I’d like to have a month, six weeks to get used to that.”

First, though, is leaving the hospital. Foyt is ready to jump-start a wheelchair and head for the door. He probably will be released Friday or Monday to return to his home in Houston. His car will be driven by Didier Theys at Laguna Seca in CART’s final 1990 race, Oct. 21. Foyt points for 1991.

“Dr. Foyt told me he’s a Texan and Texans heal faster than others,” Trammell says.

Notes

WINSTON CUP--Tommy Kendall, the 23-year-old UCLA student and Trans-Am champion from La Canada, failed to make a 32-car field at North Wilkesboro, N.C., in his first try at NASCAR’s big league and his first at oval-track racing two weeks ago. His 112.669 m.p.h. qualifying average was 35th best. “Well, this will keep you humble,” he said. “Last week, we won the Trans-Am race and clinched the manufacturer’s championship for Chevrolet, and this week I can’t even make the field.” He will try again Oct. 21 at Rockingham, N.C.

SPRINT CARS--John Redican broke a slump of more than six weeks by winning the feature Saturday at Ascot Park. It was his 10th victory of the season, but his first since Aug. 18, when he won at Santa Maria. Brad Noffsinger continues to lead the points race, with 3,802, which is 10 more than Ron Shuman going into Saturday’s race.

OFF-ROAD--Indy-car driver Bernard Jourdain is expected to co-drive with Bob Richey, who will be the first starter in Saturday’s High Desert Racing Assn. Gold Coast 300 desert race near Las Vegas. Jourdain is still recovering from injuries suffered when he crashed while trying to qualify for the Indianapolis 500.

Richey will drive a 1986 Porsche-powered Raceco in the unlimited Class 1/2 in the four-lap race that starts and finishes on the old Los Angeles highway, three miles south of Jean, Nev., which is 22 miles south of Las Vegas. Each lap will be about 77 miles, and racers will have 12 hours to complete the 308 miles.

SOUTHWEST TOUR--Doug George, of Atwater, Calif., leads the standings by 52 points over M. K. Kanke of Granada Hills with two races remaining. The tour runs 200 laps for $41,415 Saturday at Mesa Marin Raceway’s high-banked half-mile oval in Bakersfield.

WINSTON WEST--Bill Sedgwick of Van Nuys holds the lead in the driver standings with 1,171 points, 79 more than Bill Schmidt of Redding, Calif., with a 400-lap race for $72,415 remaining Sunday at Mesa Marin Raceway and the Winston Cup event at Phoenix. Sedgwick has won $49,655 to Schmidt’s $23,650, with four victories in seven starts.

MIDGETS--Sleepy Tripp continues to lead the point standings in the USAC’s Western States series, heading into races Friday and Saturday at Mesa Marin Raceway. The cars will compete for $20,000, with a 40-lap feature Friday and a 50-lap feature Saturday.

CAMEL GT--CART champion Al Unser Jr. will team with Jay Cochran for the 1990 Camel Grand Prix of Greater San Diego Nov. 9-11 at Del Mar.