Losing a Friend, Regaining a Tradition
By A.J. Foyt



As I started to write my column, I learned that Bill France, Jr. passed away today. He had been sick for quite a while and he put up a helluva fight in his battle with cancer. As tough as it is for his family now, I know that they must feel some relief knowing his struggle is over. My father died from cancer and it was one of the hardest things I ever had to deal with in my life. In fact, when he was battling cancer, Bill Jr. called me up and asked me to race in the 24 Hour Race at Daytona. I didn’t want to go but my dad said I should. I did and when I won co-driving with Bob Wollek among others, I brought the trophy home to my dad. I said I didn’t care if I never won another race because it meant so much to me to be able to bring that trophy home to him. My dad passed away four months later. I was always grateful that Bill Jr. had asked me to come down there.


The last time I saw Bill was in January when the Indy cars were testing at Daytona and he had come out to the track. We talked for a little while but I could see that it was an effort for him. I was glad to have that time with him. He was a good friend. I send my deepest condolences to Betty Jane and the rest of the France family.


This past weekend, the Indy cars returned to the Milwaukee Mile and returned to a long-time tradition too. For as long as I‘d been racing at Indy, Milwaukee was always the first race after the Indianapolis 500. That changed in 1996 when the Mile aligned with the CART Champ Car series. It took a while for the IndyCar Series to get back in the Mile but I’m glad they did. It used to be one of my favorite tracks because of the second race there which was during the State Fair. We used to run the stock cars one day and two days later we’d run the Indy cars. It was a lot of fun.


It was a lot of fun this past weekend too. I was the grand marshal of the ABC Supply/A.J. Foyt 225 and they honored me for my 50th anniversary in racing. I received the Governor’s Proclamation on naming June 3, 2007 A.J. Foyt Day in Wisconsin. I also got a Green Bay Packers No. 50 jersey autographed by A.J. Hawk (who it turns out was named after me), and an original drawing of six of my Indy cars plus a bronze A.J. Foyt Victory Lane plaque which will be permanently mounted at the track.


I gave the command to start the race saying, “Girls and boys, start your engines!” Most of the kids racing today are young enough to be my grandchildren, and in fact one of them is.


His race didn’t go very well, and ours could have gone a lot better. We used last year’s set-up which worked for Jeff Bucknum but it didn’t work for Darren. After an hour of messing with it, we totally changed the car and that picked him up right away. We just didn’t have enough practice to make it better for qualifying so we had to start in the back.


We started 15th and finished 11th, barely losing out on tenth to Jeff Simmons. Darren drove a good race and our pit stops were good, all under nine seconds and some under seven. During the course of the race Manning had the opportunity (unfortunately because we were a lap down) to race with the leaders. It showed that we could race with these guys if we could only start with them. That’s really true at Milwaukee because it’s really hard to pass there.


We had a good race car but we had one small miscommunication on our pitstop and we missed on the opportunity to get a lap back. Darren went down a lap after battling with Scott Sharp who passed him and then the leader passed Darren at the end of a long run. The next lap the yellow came out. I couldn’t believe it.


However, it was on the next yellow that we didn’t call the right strategy—we should have gambled by staying out and didn’t. The ones who did regained their lap and finished ahead of us (at least the ones who didn’t crash). But we did finish the race which was the first time at that track that we finished the race.


It was a strange race too because a lot of weird things happened like Helio Castroneves’ rear wing breaking while he was leading, causing him to crash. Lucky for him, he wasn’t injured. I hope those IRL tech guys look pretty hard at how that happened because his teammate’s wing also broke, just not as bad. I don’t remember the last time there was a rear wing failure. I don’t think it was a manufacturer’s part that broke which may also be a reason for the tech guys to look at it pretty hard. It could have been a lot worse.


Overall, it was a good weekend. My sponsor ABC Supply had over 1400 guests at the race. The company’s executives were on hand for the pre-race ceremonies. Ken Hendricks, the company founder, waved the green flag. They also presented the winner’s trophy to Tony Kanaan. I think everyone had a good time.


Well the next race is at Texas Motor Speedway, my home track. The pressure will be on for us to do well in front of the Texas fans. Tune in to see the Saturday night racing. It starts at 10 pm eastern time on ESPN2.