A.J. Foyt reflects on his remarkable history at Indy

	As a legendary driver and now as an owner, A.J. Foyt has made the Indianapolis 500 a home away from home for five decades. Michael Hickey/WireImage.com

A.J. Foyt was driving in a NASCAR Grand National --forerunner of the Nextel Cup -- race in January 1965 on the road course at Riverside International Raceway when his brakes failed. He swerved to miss Junior Johnson and Marvin Panch and went off the track.

"I was out of the race and had gone to watch cars run through the corner," Parnelli Jones said. "He went off the banking and into a hollow and started flipping. When I got there to help get him out, he was all gray."

The course safety workers thought Foyt was dead. Jones saw Foyt move slightly and informed the workers they needed to continue working to get him out. Foyt had broken his back and fractured his heel. They were the first serious injuries of his career.

Leo Mehl, then a Goodyear engineer and later the company's worldwide head of racing, had also been at Riverside that Sunday. "We were going to test the Indy car on Tuesday," Mehl said. "I was standing in the pits watching, and there was AJ above the telephone lines and trees. The car was way up there, and I'm thinking, That's my tire tester. I visited him in the hospital."

Four months later, Foyt qualified on the pole for the Indianapolis 500. "Nothing like a broken back was going to keep him out of the Indy 500," Mehl said.

The crash and Foyt's quick recovery, something that didn't seem possible to most, was a demonstration of the traits that defined him in his legendary career. He was durable, tough and undeterred in his passion to win races, particularly the Indy 500.

When the 91st Indy 500 is run Sunday, Foyt, 72, will be a participant in his 50th straight. He drove in 35 straight, from '58 to '92, and has been a car owner every year since.

Foyt suffered other debilitating injuries -- burns and broken bones -- on five more occasions between '66 and '90. They couldn't keep him out of the 500, either.

"AJ has been at the Speedway for 50 years, and it's just amazing because it has changed significantly," Mehl said. "In the early days of racing, the danger factor was extremely high for drivers. To make it through for so many years and considering he's still involved, it's truly amazing."

What kept him coming back?

"You people writing in the newspapers, saying I couldn't make a comeback, to be truthful with you," Foyt said. "That was the biggest drive because so many people said, 'He can't come back. If he does, he'll never beat nothing. I had to prove it to myself. I think that's what makes a difference in a football player, a baseball player is you've got to have that drive to want to win or you're never going to be a winner.

"And you've got to work at winning. It's not easy. You've got to have that extra little push. You got a lot of great race drivers, but there's just a very few who want to push the envelope a little bit further to win. I've seen a lot of them that could be winners a lot of times if they'd just push the envelope, but they were happy with second or third or fourth. You know, I ran them spots a lot of times, but I was never happy."