Houston native A.J. Foyt’s path to racing greatness was full of risks.
Racing icon and hometown royalty forged his path by taking daring chances to get ahead
The last time Bill Worrell stopped by to chat for a bit, he was struck by the scars.
Some were raised and thick as a rope; most were fading. There were bumps and burns everywhere, reminders of crashes, fires and maybe even a few of his famous brawls.
Worrell, the longtime Houston broadcaster, asked A.J. Foyt if he could remember which race left which mark. Or marks. Yep, he sure could. He pulled up his shirt and started pointing them out.
“I can name a lot of the racetracks that left me skinned up,” Foyt said. “All in all, if I was reborn, I wouldn’t want to come up no different than I did. I know what it’s like to be on the bottom. I know what it’s like to be on top. I know what it’s like to be in the middle. I had a great life.”
That Foyt is still with us at 84 — he celebrated that birthday in January — and about to be honored as a member of the 2019 Class of the Houston Sports Hall of Fame on Wednesday at the Houston Sports Awards is just short of a miracle. Or two.
Or, well, maybe even a few more.
The greatest driver ever to wedge himself into a race car also was the definition of in-your-face and get-outta-my-way. When he raced, nothing and no one was going to stand between ol’ A.J., as he refers to himself, and winning.
Foyt always was and always will be one of the all-time great characters in sports and a legend — a blend of guts, talent, passion, downright orneriness, determination and, yes, a little bit of obsession. He didn’t get into the sport to improve by a couple of seconds. He wanted to win. And that he did.
Cheating death … twice
The Houston native won at every level, on every type of track, and in every type of car and is the only driver to win the Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 500, the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. He drove at the Indy 500 for 35 consecutive years and won it four times.
He did it by driving on the edge. No crack was too small — even if he had only about 3 inches between his car and the wall on one side. He wouldn’t hesitate. He’d stomp the throttle, kick it up a notch and fly right by.
Foyt thinks about a moment early in his career in Sacramento, Calif. He had 3, maybe 4, inches’ clearance from the wall when he saw a chance to blow past the leader. He did it.
“Watching it today scares the hell out of me,” he said. “I was young and dumb. No way you could do that.”
Yet he did. He found trouble at times and miracles at others. And when he needed them the most, he found a couple of angels on his shoulders.
Yes, ol’ A.J. cheated death twice in his career. The first time was in 1965 in Riverside, Calif., when a 30-year-old Foyt lost his brakes, drove into a grassy area, and went end-over-end for several hundred yards. A doctor on the scene said he was gone, but fellow driver Parnelli Jones heard a sound from Foyt. Jones bent down, cleared mud and dirt from Foyt’s mouth, and Foyt started to breathe again.
The second time was at a 1990 IndyCar race at Elkhart, Wis., where a 55-year-old Foyt crashed and had to be cut out of his car. He was unconscious and suffered, among other injuries, a fractured left foot and heel, a dislocated left knee and right ankle and a broken right toe. It was thought that crash would end his career.
It didn’t.
Not long afterward, Foyt called then- Oilers strength coach Steve Watterson and asked if he’d help him rehab so he could race again.
Watterson said that kind of rehab wasn’t his specialty but that he would look into it. He sat in Foyt’s car to understand the sport and what kind of strength Foyt would need. A few days later, Foyt, held together by stitches, rods and pins, showed up in a wheelchair. Watterson said the injuries were overwhelming.
Foyt, who couldn’t put any pressure on his feet, would work out early in the morning — sometimes at 4:30 a.m. — and eventually made it twice a day. He had the blessings of Oilers owner Bud Adams and then-coach Jack Pardee to share time at the team’s facility, and the players were amazed at his work ethic.
One time, things weren’t going as fast as Foyt wanted, and he got in Watterson’s face.
“I told him, ‘I don’t tell you how to drive. I don’t need for you to tell me how to get you back,’ ” Watterson said. “He said, ‘Fair enough.’ ”
‘Who do you think you are?’
Foyt wouldn’t give up. He pushed as hard in rehab as he did on the track, determined to get back. At one point, when he couldn’t put pressure on those feet, he drove to the facility using crutches on the pedals.
Watterson remembered another time, pre-dawn, when Foyt was pulled over for speeding. The officer came to the window and said, “Who do you think you are? A.J. Foyt?” As a matter of fact he was, Foyt said, before handing him his license.
Less than a year later, Foyt, who survived two other major crashes, was back racing at Indy. And when he was honored as comeback driver of the year, Watterson went to the dinner with him. He felt a tap on the shoulder, and it was Paul Newman thanking Watterson for helping get the racing icon back on the track.
When Foyt was tapped for the Houston Sports Hall of Fame, he said with a laugh that it was about time he got honored by the city. No one would argue.
Foyt is Houston royalty and one of the city’s biggest characters.
He was born, as he puts it, “across from the pickle factory in the Heights” in 1935 and never really left. He started working on his legend status as far back as 3 when his dad Tony built him his first car. While in elementary school, he drove one of his dad’s cars around the lawn and ran it into the house.
Any question that he wanted to be a driver?
After stints at Lamar, San Jacinto and St. Thomas high schools, he dropped out and worked as a mechanic for his dad. .
Back then, A.J.’s track was down South Main at Playland Park, across from the old Gaido’s restaurant, where he raced on dirt against the likes of Billy Wade, Cecil Green and Cecil Taylor.
“There were some great drivers there,” Foyt said. “I was one of the lucky ones. I left and went on my own.
“I’ll never forget Citizens State Bank downtown. I didn’t have no money, and my mother-in-law signed a note for $1,500, and I bought a midget (car), and I left Houston. And I made it. But it was on a very short leash.”
He qualified for his first Indianapolis 500 in 1958, and his team was he and his dad — “It was a family affair,” he said. By 1961, Foyt, at 26, was already one of the best drivers on the track.
That happened to be the same year he won his first Indy 500. Foyt chuckled.
“One of the highlights for me was after I came home and was working for my dad, a lady came in and told my dad, ‘Tony, you won’t see A.J. no more.’ My dad said, ‘Yes you will. He’s down there on the dashboard of a car working right now.’
“Why not? My father helped me through all those years. No reason I couldn’t help him. She couldn’t believe that I wasn’t high rollin’ somewhere.”
His legend grew from there and so, at times, did his temper. He’d turn pink when mad and got in his fair share of fights with other drivers over the years. Even his crew stayed clear when something went wrong.
“Getting too close to A.J. when things is going bad,” his dad told Sports Illustrated in 1981, “is about like trying to dance with a chain saw.”
An adaptable driver
But for every moment like that, there was a pure Texas moment, like one Foyt delivered after he and Dan Gurney teamed to become the first American duo and American car to win at Le Mans.
“Lee-Mans? It ain’t nothin’ but a little old country road,” Foyt said at the time. “We got a lot just like it back in Texas.”
It didn’t matter what type of car or whether it was, front or rear engine. Foyt could drive it.
“I guess through the years I was very lucky,” he said. “A lot of friends of mine, they could try to drive stock cars or sprint cars, and they could drive one type of car. To me, it was not that big an adjustment. To me, that’s something you’re born with. It’s not something you go out and practice on.
“I could adapt to it pretty easy. There was no problem. I had a lot of friends who tried to adapt and just couldn’t do it.”
Of all the moments in his career, he said one of the biggest highlights was his last win at Indy in 1977.
“We built our car in Houston, Texas, and it was owned by Foyt Motor,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever top that.”
In recent years, Foyt has survived two bee attacks at his ranch and heart bypass surgery. And he’s still going strong.