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Forty years ago, A.J. Foyt made his Brickyard debut. In epic fashion, he went on
to win the Indianapolis 500 four times. In celebration of Foyt's remarkable
career, we present excerpts from Sports Illustrated's accounts of each of his
Indy victories.
Gentlemen Junk Your
Engines
You're going to have to discard the old-fashioned piston
kind and get a turbine like Parnelli Jones's to stay in the
Indianapolis 500, if last week's race was any clue—even
though the turbine ultimately
perished
by Bob Ottum
Issue date: June 12,
1967
Twenty hours after all the screaming had stopped, calmer,
cleaner and $171,227 richer, Anthony Joseph Foyt Jr. sat at
the Indianapolis Speedway Motel and ate hugely of steak,
eggs, potatoes and hot toast. The dining room looks out
through big windows
on the first tee of the Speedway golf course, and there, a
few yards away, stood Rufus Parnell Jones. He planted his
black-and-white saddle shoes on the tee and prepared to
slam out a drive on his frustrations. Beyond both of them
lay the Speedway
itself, where another group of men were waiting to take pictures
of Foyt in his marvelous orange racing machine. And out
around everybody, in a circle of spring green, lay all of
Indiana, which can be described as a state of emotional
wreckage.
This was last Thursday, a day to remember because, after
the craziest Indy 500 ever, it was the day when people
gradually began to realize that there does not seem to be
much old Indy can ever do for the encore, short of firing
the drivers out of
cannons.
Foyt, as everyone knows by now, won the race—his third
500 victory—and all that money in a scary finish.
Jones, in the tradition-shattering turbine car, lost out at
the very end after sassing along in front all day. But
there was much more. Foyt's
winning speed of 151,207 mph was a new record and his tires
were Goodyear's, breaking the victory string Firestone had
enjoyed since 1919. Jones, a Firestone man, broke so many
track records it left everybody dizzy, and he led every lap
but a few in the
middle, when he whooshed in to fill 'er up with kerosene, and
the four on the end that really counted. The race got off
to the smoothest start in its history and went on to the
smashingest finish, full of flying machinery. The 51st
running of this hoary
classic put up 32 glittering piston cars against the
turbine, and one cannot bee too sure that the jet really
lost. A new era in Indy racing may have whistled in, and
if it did, they might as well change the name of the old
Brickyard to the Indianapolis
Motor-Jet
Speedway.
The unshakable Mr. Foyt won the race only by a bit of
driving instinct so perfect it is slightly spooky. He
could not sleep all last Wednesday night just thinking
about it. He had pictured to himself the possibility of a
last-lap smashup just second
before it actually happened—the slammed on his brakes
and avoided
it.
On Thursday morning he gestured with a forkful of steak and
said: "Man I don't know what it was, but I just had
this instinct and I put the binders on her and slowed down.
I must of been going only about 100 miles and hour; hell,
I could of walked
faster than I was going. But I knew there was gonna be this
crash.
When I peeked around the No. 4 turn and saw all that smoke,
I said, 'Oh, God!' I popped her into low and pulled down to
the inside of the track. And as soon as I could see where
everybody was spinning to, I stood on it again and drove
her through to
the finish
line."
FOYT WINS INDY: 1961 | 1964 | 1977
ALSO: What Ever Happened to Indy?
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