A.J. and Larry Foyt have family team at top of IndyCar

Larry Foyt may be earning praise for his management of the team that bears his father’s name. But he makes sure to keep four-time Indianapolis 500 champion A.J. Foyt 100 percent involved in its direction.

“Believe it or not, I hardly make a decision that we [both] don’t go over,” Larry said on Thursday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “Our working relationship has really been awesome. When I first came in, when he made the announcement that I was going to be team director, I didn’t want to just jump in and be the boss’ kid [and] come in and change everything. I really had to get back into an IndyCar mentality. I wanted to analyze the team, see what we were working with.

“As I’ve learned over the years, every year he’s given me a little bit more leeway to do things the way I’ve wanted. I think we’ve become a more engineering-based team, kind of what modern IndyCar racing is. It has changed a lot over the years.”

It was Larry that was the catalyst for the team’s signing of driver Takuma Sato, with A.J. mentioning that his son was “doing most of the talking” on that effort. So far, the decision has paid off handsomely with Sato’s victory at Long Beach last month (the first in over a decade for A.J. Foyt Racing) and a place atop the IZOD IndyCar Series championship standings going into this weekend’s “500.”

“I think we knew he was a good race driver,” A.J. said about Sato’s hire. “He did a lot of testing for Honda way back yonder on road courses. [We were] kind of looking for a guy that could play both parts, ovals and road courses…He does give you good feedback. [He] and the engineers work very close. I think that’s really been successful for us.”

As for the chances that he, Rick Mears and Al Unser are joined by either Helio Castroneves or Dario Franchitti this weekend as four-time winners of the “500,” A.J. said he wouldn’t be surprised to see “a six, seven, eight-time winner” of the race one day with the current technology being used.

However, he also wondered how Castroneves and Franchitti would fare in the equipment he raced with in the past.

“They’re good race car drivers with the equipment they’re in, [but] they need to get in a roadster with cement tires and see how good they stick in a corner,” A.J. said, earning some laughs from his audience.