Foyt was born in Houston, Texas, to Anthony Joseph “Tony” Foyt and Emma Evelyn Monk. His father was a mechanic who owned and raced midget race cars as a hobby. At age three his father gave him a toy racer with a lawnmower engine; his first victory came at age five in a match race against local midget champion Doc Cossey at Buffalo Stadium, and he later recalled that at that moment he knew he had chosen the right profession. Tony recalled leaving eleven-year-old A.J. home to attend a race and returning to find the boy had done considerable damage driving the family’s other race car in the yard, including causing the engine to catch on fire. Frequently in fights, Foyt often ran home from school shortly after being dropped off. He eventually dropped out of high school to work as a mechanic and concentrate on racing. In 1955, he married Lucy Zarr, who died in 2023.
Foyt raced midget cars from age seventeen, driving for a low-budget owner after his father refused him use of the family car. His first midget win was at Kansas City in 1957. He won the 1960 and 1961 Turkey Night Grand Prix — the first two years that event was held at Ascot Park in Gardena, California — and the 1961 Hut Hundred after starting last. In 1975 and 1976, he won the Australian Speedcar Grand Prix at the Liverpool International Speedway in Sydney, Australia. He ended his career with twenty midget car feature wins.
Foyt began his sprint car career in 1956, driving the Les Vaughn Offy with the International Motor Contest Association (IMCA). He outqualified 42 drivers at the Minnesota State Fair on August 24, 1956, and the following day won his first sprint car race at the Red River Fair in Fargo, North Dakota. A 1957 victory at Salem, Indiana, over Bob Cleberg brought him to the attention of USAC car owners and he switched from the IMCA to USAC that season. He eventually won 28 USAC National sprint car feature races and the USAC Eastern Championship in 1960.
Foyt debuted at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1958, spinning out on lap 148. That same year he raced in the Trophy of the Two Worlds at Autodromo Nazionale Monza in Italy. In 1961, he became the first driver to successfully defend his points championship and win the Indianapolis 500 in the same season, beating Eddie Sachs by 8.28 seconds — the second-closest finish to that time — after Sachs was forced to pit for a tire change with three laps remaining.
In 1964, Foyt won a record ten of fourteen races en route to the championship, including his second Indianapolis 500. That race is remembered for the fiery second-lap crash that claimed the lives of Dave MacDonald and Eddie Sachs. Foyt had declined an offer to drive a Team Lotus-Ford because owner Colin Chapman would not guarantee him the reserve car, in case something happened to cars driven by Jim Clark and Dan Gurney.
In the 1967 Indianapolis 500, Parnelli Jones’ STP-Paxton Turbocar lapped the field before failing with three laps remaining, leaving Foyt in front. Foyt slowed through turn four on the final lap on a premonition of trouble and threaded through a five-car front-stretch accident to take the checkered flag. That same year he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a Ford GT40 Mk IV co-driven by Dan Gurney and entered by Carroll Shelby. Foyt reportedly received only ten laps of practice; when Gurney overslept and missed a driver change in the night, Foyt wound up driving nearly 18 of the 24 hours. He is the only driver to win the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the same year.
In the 1977 Indianapolis 500, Foyt ran out of fuel and fell around 32 seconds behind Gordon Johncock. By increasing his turbo boost and closing at 1.5–2 seconds per lap, Foyt caught Johncock just as his engine expired, and took the win. Of his 67 career Championship Car victories, twelve were at Trenton Speedway.
In a 1990 CART race at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, Foyt’s car plowed through a dirt embankment, severely injuring his legs and feet. After multiple surgeries he returned for the 1991 Indianapolis 500 and qualified second. He announced his retirement before that race but changed his mind after being caught in an early incident. He started his 35th consecutive Indianapolis 500 in 1992, finishing ninth.
Foyt was the USAC stock car champion in 1968, 1978, and 1979. In NASCAR, he needed only ten races to record his first win, passing Bobby Isaac on the final lap of the 1964 Firecracker 400 at the Daytona International Speedway. In January 1965, at the Motor Trend 500 at Riverside International Raceway, a brake failure at the end of the downhill back straight sent him airborne off an embankment; the track doctor pronounced him dead at the scene, but Parnelli Jones revived him. Foyt suffered severe chest injuries, a broken back, and a fractured ankle.
Foyt won the 1972 Daytona 500 and the 1971 and 1972 races at the Ontario Motor Speedway for Wood Brothers Racing. His final NASCAR win was in the first of Daytona’s 125-mile qualifying heats in 1978. In 1988, he was banned from NASCAR for six months and fined $5,000 following incidents during the Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway; the suspension was later lifted, with the fine raised to $7,500. His final NASCAR Winston Cup race was the 1994 Brickyard 400, where he finished 30th.
Foyt won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1967 on his only attempt. He won the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1985, co-driving a Porsche with Bob Wollek, making him one of twelve drivers to complete the Triple Crown of endurance racing.
While still racing, Foyt entered a partnership with Jim Gilmore under the Gilmore-Foyt Racing name; the team built its own Coyote chassis from 1966 to 1983. After retiring, he owned A. J. Foyt Enterprises in NASCAR and CART. When the Indy Racing League arrived in 1996, Foyt became one of the few CART team owners to embrace it. Scott Sharp took a share of the 1996 IRL title driving for him, Kenny Bräck won the 1998 IRL title in a Foyt car, and Bräck won the 1999 Indianapolis 500 for the team, placing Foyt in the winner’s circle at Indianapolis for the fifth time.
A disputed finish at the inaugural IRL race at Texas Motor Speedway in 1997 saw Foyt’s driver Billy Boat initially declared the winner over Arie Luyendyk due to a USAC scoring error. When Luyendyk confronted Eddie Gossage, Foyt shoved Luyendyk into a tulip bed. USAC later reversed its decision and declared Luyendyk the winner; the IRL relieved USAC of future scoring duties.
Foyt holds the Indianapolis 500 career records for most consecutive starts (35), most races led (13), most times led (39), most laps driven, and most miles driven (4,909 laps, 12,272.5 miles). He is the only driver to win the Indianapolis 500 in both front- and rear-engined cars. Mario Andretti is the only other driver to have won both the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500. Foyt won the IROC championships in 1976 and 1977. In 1987, he set a closed-course speed record of 257.123 mph driving the Oldsmobile Aerotech at a test track near Fort Stockton, Texas. He is the last living driver who started in the Races of Two Worlds in 1958 at Autodromo Nazionale Monza. He is the oldest living winner of the Indianapolis 500.
Foyt has been inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame (1967), the Auto Racing Hall of Fame (1978), the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame (1988), the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (1989), the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame (1990), the International Motorsports Hall of Fame (2000), the Automotive Hall of Fame (2007), the USAC Hall of Fame (2012), the Sebring Hall of Fame (2018), and the Houston Sports Hall of Fame (2019). In April 2010, the IRL announced the A. J. Foyt Oval Championship, awarded to the best-performing driver on ovals in an IndyCar Series season; it was discontinued after 2012.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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