Foyt grew up in Houston, where his father owned and raced midget cars. He received a toy racer with a lawnmower engine at age three and won a match race against a local midget champion at age five. He dropped out of high school to work as a mechanic and focus on racing, beginning his professional career in midget and sprint cars in the mid-1950s through the IMCA and USAC circuits.
Foyt debuted at Indianapolis in 1958. In 1961 he became the first driver to successfully defend his national championship title and won the Indianapolis 500 in the same season, beating Eddie Sachs by 8.28 seconds in the second-closest finish to that time. He won at Indianapolis again in 1964, piloting an Offenhauser-powered roadster to a record ten victories from fourteen races that year for the championship. His 1967 Indianapolis victory came after Parnelli Jones's dominant STP-Paxton Turbocar retired with three laps remaining. His fourth and final Indianapolis win came in 1977, when he overturned a 32-second deficit to Gordon Johncock — running maximum turbo boost at the risk of engine failure — before Johncock's engine expired with eight seconds separating them.
Foyt started in 35 consecutive Indianapolis 500s, from 1957 to 1992, and recorded 67 Championship Car victories over his career. He remains the only driver to win the Indianapolis 500 in both front-engined and rear-engined cars.
In 1967, Foyt won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in his only attempt, co-driving a Ford GT40 Mk IV with Dan Gurney in a car entered by Carroll Shelby. Foyt reportedly completed nearly 18 hours of the 24 after Gurney missed a driver change by oversleeping. Despite limited practice, the pair won overall. He later won the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1983 and 1985 alongside Bob Wollek and the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1985, also with Wollek. This combination of victories at the world's four most prestigious races — Indianapolis 500, Daytona 500, Le Mans, and Daytona 24 Hours — remains unique in motorsport history.
Foyt also competed regularly in NASCAR, winning seven Cup Series events. He won the 1964 Firecracker 400 at Daytona and the 1972 Daytona 500. He was USAC Stock Car champion in 1968, 1978, and 1979. His NASCAR career included 128 starts over several decades.
During his active driving career, Foyt began fielding cars for other drivers under the Gilmore-Foyt Racing name, constructing his own Coyote chassis from 1966 to 1983. After retiring from driving, he built A. J. Foyt Enterprises into a team that competed in CART, the IndyCar Series, and NASCAR. Kenny Bräck won the 1998 IRL championship and the 1999 Indianapolis 500 driving for Foyt. Scott Sharp shared the 1996 IRL title in a Foyt car.
Foyt's career record includes seven national championships, four Indianapolis 500 victories, 159 USAC wins, and victories at every major American circuit event. Smokey Yunick, the celebrated engine builder, described Foyt as "the greatest race driver there ever has been in U.S. racing history." He has been inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, and numerous other institutions. In 1987, he set a closed-course land speed record of 257.123 miles per hour in an Oldsmobile Aerotech on a test track near Fort Stockton, Texas. The IndyCar Series named the A. J. Foyt Oval Championship in his honour, awarded from 2010 to 2012 to the top-performing driver on oval tracks.
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