Anthony Joseph Foyt, Wiki, Height, Weight, Racing Career & More

Anthony Joseph Foyt: Anthony Joseph Foyt Jr. is a retired American car racing driver who competed in various motorsports. His open-wheel racing career includes US Automobile Club Champ, sprint, and midget cars. He raced in NASCAR and USAC stock cars. He was the winner of several major sports car racing events.

Anthony Joseph Foyt Biography

Anthony Joseph Foyt: Foyt was born in Houston, Texas, on January 16, 1935. His father was an auto technician who, as a pastime, owned and raced midget race cars. When A. J. Foyt was five years old, his father made him a toy racecar powered by a lawnmower motor. Tony claimed that when he and his wife left an eleven-year-old A. J. home to attend a race, they returned to find the child had caused significant damage to the house by driving the family’s other race car in the yard and catching fire. While upset, the senior Foyt accepted that A. J. had a future as a driver. A. J. went to Pershing and Hamilton middle schools, Lamar, San Jacinto, and St. Thomas Catholic high schools but dropped out to become a mechanic and devote more time to racing. When he got his driver’s license, Foyt bought a second-hand Oldsmobile and used it to practice the mechanical abilities he’d learned working on his father’s cars. He also began street racing with the car until his father discovered him.

Anthony Joseph Foyt Wiki

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Anthony Joseph Foyt F1 Career

1953, at the age of 18, Foyt began racing midgets in a car owned and maintained by his father. At the 1956 Night before the 500 in Anderson, Indiana, he started his USAC career with a midget car. In 1957, he won his first midget car race at Kansas City’s 100-lap event and finished eighth in the season’s point standings. After the 1957 season, he moved on to sprint cars and the Championship Car. He occasionally participated in midget car races. He won the initial two Turkey Night Grand Prixs conducted at Ascot Park in 1960 and 1961. After starting last, he won the 1961 Hut Hundred and finished seventh in National Midget points that year. He won the 1970 Astro Grand Prix, which he promoted in his native Houston. He concluded his career with 20 victories in midget car races. Even after he had reached the pinnacle of his sport, Foyt was known to occasionally participate in small, local events to thank the promoters who had supported him during his ascent.

He was the USAC stock car champion in 1968, 1978, and 1979. In 1963 and 1969, he placed second, and in 1970, he was third. His USAC stock car racing victories included the 1964 Billy Vukovich Memorial 200 at Hanford Speedway in California. Additionally, he won multiple USAC stocker races at Milwaukee, Texas World Speedway, & Michigan International Speedway.

For Wood Brothers Racing, Foyt won the 1971 and 1972 Ontario Motor Speedway races in 1971 and 1972. The layout matched that of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. In 1978, driving a self-fielded superspeedway Buick, he won the first of Daytona’s 125-mile qualifying preliminaries while competing in a NASCAR race for the final time.

Following several incidents during the Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in 1988, Foyt was suspended from NASCAR for six months and fined $5,000. The suspension was lifted after the vice president of Competition, Les Richter, reviewed the incident. His sanction, however, was increased to $7,500.

Foyt’s final NASCAR Winston Cup Series race was the inaugural Brickyard 400 in 1994. Foyt finished in thirty-first place, four laps behind race victor Jeff Gordon. In 1995 and 1996, Foyt re-entered the race but failed to qualify both times. In 1995, his attempt failed because rain canceled the second round of time trials.

In the early days of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, Foyt raced three times, with his highest finish being 18th in the 1995 GM Goodwrench / Delco Battery 200, for which he qualified ninth.