Word: foyt
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...Houston's A. J. Foyt, 29: the Firecracker 400 stock-car race, averaging 151.4 m.p.h. in a 1964 Dodge to edge North Carolina's Bobby Isaac by less than the length of a car hood; at Daytona Beach, Fla. The U.S. Auto Club racing champion, winner of the 1964 Indianapolis 500, Foyt once again demonstrated his amazing versatility: alternating between sports cars, stock cars, sprint cars and big Offenhauser-powered Indy roadsters, Foyt has failed to win only two of the races he has entered this year...
...dint of superb driving, those two old front-engine diehards, Jones and A. J. Foyt, pushed their standard Offies into fourth and fifth starting position, but then Gurney, taking it cool, slipped into sixth position in a Lotus-Ford. The qualification runs go on until this week, when the top 33 cars are chosen to compete on Memorial Day. There is always a chance that someone with a hot engine, front or rear, will rack up an even more spectacular time. Offy itself, after a year of experimenting, has a rear-mounted engine, and 14 of the 61 entries...
...mile course was part road, part track; in the infield, it snaked through a series of sharp hairpin turns; then it swept onto Daytona's ultrafast, banked stock-car oval. In the lighter, more maneuverable Lotus, Gurney picked up valuable seconds on the turns; Foyt got the seconds back by blasting around the oval flat-out at nearly 185 m.p.h. By the 20th lap, both had lapped the entire field. But neither one could shake the other. Sixteen times in the first 38 laps the lead changed hands, while both drivers nursed their cars carefully, hoping for a break...
More Time to Think. Foyt, however, had a little score to settle. Last year a couple of sports-car types named Jimmy Clark and Dan Gurney invaded Indianapolis, gave big-car racers a driving lesson by running circles around the Offies in their tiny British-built Lotuses. Now Foyt was out to return the favor-by beating the sports-car boys at their own silly game. "Sports cars are easy to drive," he sneered. "You get more time to think. Sure, you have to study the course, and you have to downshift, and you have to learn how to brake...
...Foyt coasted to victory. "It got pretty lonely out there after Gurney left," he chuckled, posing for photographers with Miss Universe. "But I would have won anyway." Gurney was not so sure: "This issue between us is not at all settled." Other sports-car drivers groused that Foyt won only because he had the fastest car. "That gearbox alone cost a few thousand dollars," said one, "and those Weber carburetors are the best there is." Said another: "I'd like to see him in a lesser car before I made up my mind how good he is." But Foyt...