Yahoo Autos A.J. Foyt Received a Hero's Welcome at Le Mans
A.J. Foyt professed his disinterest in returning to Le Mans for decades after winning the race in 1967 with Dan Gurney in a Ford GT40 Mk IV. The four-time Indy 500 winner, a legend among legends, was finally swayed by the Ford family to join them on a trip to France last week - on the 50th anniversary of his win - and guess what happened? He loved every minute of it.
“I was glad to go back after 50 years and see the new course, because it is nothing like the course when Dan Gurney and I won over there,” he said ahead of IndyCar’s visit to Road America this weekend. Victorious in his one and only Le Mans start, Super Tex was struck by all of the safety advancements that have been made since the harrowing 1960s.
“I think the course is slower and a lot easier to run because the old course was very dangerous. You didn’t have crash walls or guardrails, all you had were trees that were whitewashed, which they don’t have now,” he said. “It’s still a beautiful course, but I think I liked the other course better because you could do a lot more racing.”
Foyt was also surprised by the amount of technological advancements and creature comforts enjoyed by today’s Le Mans drivers.
“We had a clutch and a square pattern on the shifting, and nowadays all they use is the paddle shift,” he said. “I’d like to see some of those guys drive the stuff Dan and I had to drive. I think it’d be a lot more work, and the air conditioning back then wouldn’t cool them off that much. It’s hard for me to believe that you have to have air conditioning now - I don’t believe in that.”
Using the Foyt Dictionary, you can almost hear A.J. wanting to call the 2017 Le Mans class a bunch of “mama’s boys.”
“It was just two drivers back then. Now it’s three drivers and if one of them gets sick, you can have another driver,” he continued. “Now they have adjustable seats, adjustable pedals and steering wheels, where Dan and I shared the same seat. His arms were crimped and mine were stretched out because he was much taller than me - that’s also why they had the bubble in the roof. Nowadays, the cars have air conditioning and it’s monitored so if it gets too hot, the drivers are black-flagged to come in. To me, it’s not real racing because you shouldn’t have air conditioning in the cars. If you’re a race driver, you live with it, no matter how hot it gets.”
Foyt was genuinely taken aback by the reception from fans and the Ford team during his visit.
“It surprised me the people who had [die cast models of] my cars and pictures of me driving cars like my Gilmore and Bowes Seal Fast cars. People must have had them for years,” he said.
“I must have signed over 300 autographs. Then they had a lot [of pictures] of the Le Mans car that Dan and I drove. I think one of the highlights of the whole deal was when we got there, Ford [of Europe] had a golf cart painted up like the car we won with and it had A.J. Foyt and Dan Gurney on it. That was quite an honor. Ford really treated me well, they had a beautiful hospitality center. They asked, 'what was yours [in 1967]? I said, 'we just had a little pup tent - it was nothing like you have here today.'”
Nicknamed “Cassius” (as in Cassius Clay, aka Muhammad Ali) by Gurney, Foyt’s boastful, Ali-esque persona has not diminished.
“It was great to see our car back here in Le Mans,” the 82-year-old said of seeing the red GT40 on display trackside. “I told some people that if Dan and I were young enough to drive it today, I don’t know if they could beat us or not because they’d have to run fast.”
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