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Foyt at Le Mans: On his own terms

Friday, 16 June 2017

By David Phillips / Images by Ford Performance & LAT archiveThere is no record of A.J. Foyt doing a Douglas MacArthur and saying "I shall return" to Le Mans. Nevertheless today, for the first time since teaming with Dan Gurney to score a legendary win in the 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans in the Ford GT Mk IV (below), "Super Tex" once again strode through the paddock at the Circuit de la Sarthe. OK, there's more than a little hitch in his get-along – 82 years on this earth and a crash in 1991 that broke nearly every bone worth mentioning in his feet, ankles and legs will do that. But make no mistake, A.J. Foyt returned to Le Mans on his own terms and very much under his own power.

He wouldn't have it any other way.



"I told my family, 'I never want to go to a racetrack in a wheelchair or a walker,'" he says. "That's why I've always worked so hard to come back from any time I've been hurt. Like in '91 . . . people said, 'The next time we see him he'll be back on crutches.' and the next year I walked to my racecar. I wasn't walking good, but I was walking. It was the same thing with racing. If I got beat today, I couldn't wait to get back in the car and win the next race."'
Of course, after winning in 1967, there never was a next 24 Hours of Le Mans for Foyt.
"I went there one time and won as a rookie, so I didn't need to come back," he grins. "I had nothing to prove. I didn't think I'd be here 50 years later, but I know I won't be back in another 50 years!
"It was nothing like this in 1967," Foyt continues, glancing around Ford's sumptuous hospitality suite. "We had a little trailer where we could change clothes and get a little sleep but it was nothing like it is today."
The accommodations aren't the only thing that's changed. Today, a driver planning to make his or her first start at Le Mans isn't given the green flag to compete until they've familiarized themselves with the racetrack and the various safety procedures on the Automobile Club de l'Ouest's simulator. Foyt, of course, did not have a simulator at his disposal. What's more, after suffering burns in a race at Milwaukee the weekend after winning the Indianapolis 500 for a third time, he was unable to participate in the pre-race test for the 24 Hours. So he relied on a track map and his street... make that road sense to get acclimated to the 8-plus mile circuit.
"I'd run plenty of road courses before, but nothing like Le Mans," he says. "But a road course is a road course. You kind of get used to what you gotta do, familiarize yourself with the track – that was the big thing.
"So I got behind Denny Hulme on my first run. He'd been here before and I figured he knew the track pretty good, so when he came out of the pits I figured I'd follow him. Then after about three or four laps we got going pretty quick and I went on and passed him. He was a super guy and I knew he knew where he was going, and I didn't know much about it."
When Foyt, Gurney, Hulme and company turned through Tertre Rouge onto the Mulsanne Straight in 1967, more than three miles of ruler-straight road awaited them before the legendary Kink and the Mulsanne Corner. Since 1990 the Mulsanne Straight has been interrupted by a pair of chicanes and, of course, it is now lined with tall, stout guardrails. In 1967? Not so much.
"It was just three-and-a-half miles of straightaway with Mulsanne Corner at the end," Foyt says. "There weren't any walls or guardrails either. Just a line of trees on both sides of the road where they'd white-washed the trunks about five or six feet high. I didn't like that too much. You were running at 200 mph and you knew if you went off you were in a lot of trouble. The guys now don't know how nice it is."
Not only in terms of track safety. With few exceptions, all 60 cars starting in this year's 24 Hours will be driven by teams of three drivers, one more than the usual compliment in 1967. And the predicted 90-degree temperatures for Saturday and Sunday should not have a major impact on driver stamina, given that the rules mandate cars run air conditioning to keep cockpit temperatures in check when ambient temperatures soar.
"We had air conditioning in the Mk IV – we opened a window!" says Foyt. "It's a different world now. I think I raced at a good time. Don't get me wrong. You still have great racing, hard racing, but it's a completely different type of racing. Back then you had to be in pretty good shape and you had to have a head on your shoulders. Looking back from when I started at Indy, there's only two or three of us left – and most of 'em didn't die from old age."