Many people have asked about the use of the word “Survivor” in the subhead of A.J. Foyt: Survivor, Champion, Legend.
In researching A.J.’s story, especially the early years, I was struck by how many drivers coming up through the ranks at the same time as Foyt were killed while racing. Dan Gurney gave me the best description of what racing was like during those days. “You had to have a World War II mentality,” he told me when I interviewed him for my book Black Noon. “Sooner or later, you were gonna get it.”
Take Don Hutchinson. He was twenty-four and “one of the most promising young drivers licensed by IMCA” according to a pre-race article that didn’t mention A.J. Hutchinson had joined IMCA a year before Foyt, earning rookie of the year honors. He was fourth in the national point standings midway through 1956 and coming off two victories.
He and Foyt were entered in a Tuesday night sprint race during fair week at the Kansas State Fairgrounds in, ironically, the town of Hutchinson. The pair were running side-by-side for the lead in a heat race when the two cars touched. Hutchinson’s car flipped end-over-end before landing upside down, trapping the driver underneath. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. Foyt was thrown from his car but suffered only minor head injuries and raced five days later.
Perhaps no one paralleled Foyt’s early career more than Jim Packard. He was also a couple of years older than Foyt (everyone was older than Foyt in those days) and made his first IMCA start in 1955, in the same race where A.J. captured his first series win. Packard was the first to move to USAC but struggled in a hodgepodge of midget, sprint and Indy cars. Their paths crossed often and while A.J. was finding success in midgets and sprint cars, neither driver had won an Indy car race at the start of the 1960 season.
Packard was the first to break through. After a third at Milwaukee and second at Langhorne, his first Indy car victory came at the Illinois State Fairgrounds on August 20, a race Foyt crashed out of on the first lap. Handsome, with a jet-black Elvis-style haircut, Packard was fast becoming a fan favorite for his hard driving and good looks.
Two weeks later was the traditional Labor Day Indy car race at Du Quoin, Illinois. Both drivers had raced the day before in a sprint car event at Salem, Packard finishing just ahead of Foyt in an event won by Parnelli Jones.
Don Branson qualified on the pole with Lloyd Ruby second, Jim Hurtubise third, and Foyt fourth. With track temperatures topping one hundred degrees, Branson led early but was soon passed by Packard, who came charging up from sixth in an eight-year-old car to take the lead. Foyt then passed Branson, but couldn’t close on the leader.
Packard stretched his lead to more than twenty seconds over Foyt while lapping every other car. The pace eventually took its toll, however, the right-rear tire on Packard’s car shredding on lap seventy-five of one hundred. Foyt inherited the lead and cruised to his first “big car” victory, Packard coming back to finish fifth.
His uniform soaked in oil, Foyt was cheered in Victory Lane, but the biggest roars came for Packard. “Packard Thrills Crowd—Foyt Wins” read one headline. A.J. added his praise.
“That boy Packard was outrunning me, but we just outlasted him,” Foyt said. “That boy was really going. It’s too bad it had to happen to him, but that’s racing luck.”
Three weeks later, in a sprint car race at the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Fairgrounds, it was Packard back on top, with Hurtubise second and Foyt third, in an event marred by the death of driver Tommy Thomson.
Foyt wasn’t entered in the small midget race on Saturday, October 1, in Fairfield, Illinois. Packard had hitched a ride with Jones and was driving Parnelli’s backup car when he suddenly lost control in qualifying and flipped multiple times, killing him instantly. It fell to Jones to return Packard’s belongings to his wife, who had one small child at home and was pregnant with another. Jones called Packard’s death “one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with.” The next day Jones finished second in a midget race in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Packard was the fourth Indy car driver killed in as many months since the 500, a fact not lost on Sacramento Bee columnist Wilbur Adams, who was writing a preview article for an upcoming race.
“The big cars are supposed to race on the state fair ground track on the last Sunday of the month,” Adams wrote. “We say supposed to because the casualty rate among the drivers has been so high, there may be none alive by October 30.”
“I didn’t really know him,” Foyt said when I asked about Packard. “Got killed in some little midget race.”
At one point during our interview process I asked A.J. how he kept going. We’d been talking about 1966, a particularly bad year for drivers. At a June race in Reading, Pennsylvania, Jud Larson and Red Riegel had died in a sprint car crash. At Ascot late in the season Dick Atkins and Don Branson were killed in a crash. The race was stopped while the track was cleaned but when it was restarted, Foyt led until his engine blew up. That night he went to Sacramento, where he won a race the next day.
“How’d you keep going?” I asked A.J.
He seemed surprised by the question. “What do you mean?”
“You’d just seen two drivers killed, drivers you knew well, yet you kept racing, then loaded up and headed for Sacramento. How’d you keep going after that?”
He shrugged. “It’s just what we did.” Just as Bobby Unser had done at Reading and Parnelli Jones had done after Packard was killed.
Foyt would have more than his share of bad accidents in the years ahead but each time he came back. In so many ways he was the ultimate survivor.
“A.J. Foyt: Survivor, Champion, Legend,” is now available to pre-order on Amazon at $39.95 and through publisher Octane Press at the pre-order price of $29.95. https://bit.ly/Foyt