A.J. Foyt:

Parnelli Jones (1963 Indy 500 winner and national champion): "A.J. and I were heavy competitors, especially in the midgets out here in California. We tangled with each other in a race and afterwards I told my mechanic, 'That's it, I'm never speaking to that guy again, I've had it. I don't want to talk to him, I don't want to be his friend anymore.' I mean we were ready to go to punches when this happened. A little while later, I'm working on my race car and A.J. gives me a big bear hug from behind and then I melted. He had a great talent for doing that and it just shows you how really warm he is."

Al Unser Jr. (2-time Indy 500 winner and national champion): "In 1986 I was driving for A.J. in the 24 Hours of Daytona sports car race. I got up real early to take over the next shift and was not fully awake. I'm walking towards the pits and someone handed me a sandwich. So I drove the first two laps eating the sandwich and my first time by the pits, A.J. gets on the radio and says, "I'm paying you to drive the race car, not to sit and eat lunch."

Cale Yarborough (former NASCAR stock car driver champion and team owner): "A.J. and I started losing, uh, getting a little thin on top at the same time, and I had a friend who had come up with a hair-growing remedy. I knew A.J. was looking for something so I sent him some. A few days later he called me but he didn't really need a telephone cause I think I could have heard him from Texas--that stuff had really burned his head up. Needless to say, I didn't have to try it."

Dick Hutcherson (former NASCAR stock car driver; stock car chassis builder and supplier): "A.J. had bought a Camaro to run USAC stock cars and we were running at Texas World Speedway at College Station. He had gotten mad about what some reporters had written about him in the days before the race. Well he sat on the pole and was leading the race when he pulled in with just a couple laps to go. I leaned in the car and asked him what was wrong and he said, 'Overheating.' I looked at the gauges which were normal and said, 'Why'd you pull out?' He looked at me and said, 'I didn't want to talk to those reporters in Victory Circle.' We had the race won and he parked the damn car!"

Leo Mehl (former Director of Goodyear Racing, Worldwide and former Indy Racing League Executive Director): "My first memory of A.J. Foyt is after Goodyear signed him up in 1963. Somebody had appointed Foyt (probably himself) the training officer for young Goodyear engineers and, unfortunately, I was one of his first students.

"I remember going to a race in Trenton, New Jersey and it was very cold and the tires were terrible because they wouldn't warm up in the cold.

"Well, we were scheduled to tire test in Phoenix the next day. Goodyear had a company plane, a Lockheed Lodestar, which was very reliable but it only flew about 150mph. A.J. and I got on the plane after the race in Trenton and I got 11 hours of continuous instruction. I never asked to use the company plane again."

Johnny Rutherford (3-time Indy 500 champion): "It was the 1973 season and I was driving for McLaren, the original M-16 McLaren. The car was extremely good but it had one characteristic in that it would spin without any warning. But it would usually do it so rapidly that you could do a 360, save the thing and keep going.

"Invariably every time I did it--probably four times that year--A.J. was right behind me to see it. The first time he came in and said, 'how'd you do that?' 'Do what?' I asked. 'Man, every time I spin one of those things I hit something,' he said laughing.

"The second time he came over and said, 'I still don't know how you do that, spin and keep going.'

"The last time it happened, we were in Michigan and somebody had dumped oil. I was at speed and A.J. was coming out of the pits when I hit the oil and spun. I saved the car and drove back to the pits. Sure enough A.J. pulls in behind me. He gets out of his car and just as he gets to my pit, he starts to say something, but I thumped him on the chest with my finger and said, 'A.J., that's the last time I'm gonna show ya, now you're on your own!' He cracked up."

Leonard Wood (NASCAR stock car team owner): "The first race at Ontario Motor Speedway (2.5-mile paved oval track in California), A.J. had sat on the pole and he was leading the race and it paid $150 a lap to lead. He called in and said, 'I've got a tire that's vibrating.' They had a caution and he said he was going to come in and get new tires but he never did. He said he got to thinking that at $150 a lap, it felt pretty good so he just stayed out there. Never did come in."

George Bignotti (all-time winning Indy car chief mechanic and former team owner):  "I can remember a time in the dirt car at Langhorne (1-mile dirt track in Pennsylvania) when his left rear radius rod fell off. There were about four laps to go. A.J. came by and he was holding it in his left hand and driving with one hand. Then he put his knee on the steering wheel--he was leading the race--and he went like this [wiping his forehead] like he wanted relief. And I'm saying, 'Go!' And he finished the race and won it with the radius rod in his hand. That was outstanding."

Mario Andretti (Formula One and Indy car champion): “Quite truthfully, without being corny, over my career, Foyt’s tenacity, his competitive spirit overshadows everything else. As a competitor you have to possess that to be a winner and he has shown that to me over the years. He’s been an inspiration to me and more often than not you use that to sometimes set your mind straight. He’s done that for me no question.”

Dale Earnhardt (then 7-time NASCAR champion):  "He's the most awesome old fart I know."

Johnny Boyd (the late former Indy 500 race driver): “There’s nothing that he hasn’t driven, there’s no race that he hasn’t won, there’s no record that hasn’t been set. Some of his records have been broken but I don’t think that they have the glitter that Foyt’s records had because of the era in which he did it…Surviving through that era was an achievement in itself. He has a charisma about him that many winners never have. There’s a definite difference between a winner and a champion.”

Dale Earnhardt (the late 7-time NASCAR Stock Car champion): “He’s the most awesome old fart I know.” 

Johnny Hayes (then U.S. Tobacco Vice-President/Motorsports): “Baseball had Babe Ruth, the Catholics have the Pope and racing has A.J. Foyt. A.J. has the Dick Butkus approach to life, run over top of you, kick your butt. He’s that kind of racer, never back down from anybody or anything. To sum it up, he’s the man, he is the man.”

Junior Johnson (former NASCAR Stock Car driver and team owner): “He’s a one-of-a-kind, funny, serious, aggravating as hell. Don’t know what he wants, stays lost two-thirds of the time. Other than that he can drive the hell out of a race car.”

Parnelli Jones (1963 Indy 500 winner and national champion): “One of the things that makes an outstanding race driver is the fact that they have to have a lot of will to win. The fact that A.J. had a lot of will to win to begin with plus being a Texan on top of that just gave him another 10 percent.”

Terry Labonte (two-time NASCAR Stock Car champion): “He was the reason I left Texas. I knew it wasn’t gonna be big enough for both of us. It’s a big state but it’s not that big.”

Leo Mehl (then Goodyear Director of Racing): “I’ve always said that if they had a race at Indy where the drivers had to build the car, build the engine and drive the car, Foyt would win by 50 miles.”