Why This AJ Foyt Racing Rebuild In IndyCar Might Actually Work

When Takuma Sato drove the famed No. 14 AJ Foyt Racing team Indy car to victory in the 2013 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, it was the last time the famed team won a race.

The team is owned by the legendary AJ Foyt, the first four-time winning driver of the Indianapolis 500 and the winningest driver in IndyCar history with 67 victories.

At 87, Foyt has long since turned the operation over to his son, Larry, who hopes to return the team to its past glory.

But that has been a struggle.

Before it can recapture glory, first it has to become competitive.

Since Sato’s last victory with the team nearly 10 years ago, the team has struggled to be escape backmarker status. Before it can contend for a victory, it has to become a consistent finisher in the top-10.

Drivers have been a revolving door, from famed veterans such as Tony Kanaan and Sebastian Bourdais, to rookies such as Kyle Kirkwood.

Thirteen different drivers have competed for Foyt’s IndyCar team since Sato drove to victory on the streets of Long Beach 10 seasons ago. Out of that group were some “Indy 500 only” drivers that did not compete for the full season.

Engineers have come and gone. The team has split its race shop into two – one in Waller, Texas near Foyt’s home and another in Speedway, Indiana – within the shadows of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

It seems that every year, Larry Foyt is trying to reinvent the team.

He may have found the right formula for 2023 with the hiring of 24-year-old Santino Ferrucci of Connecticut and 22-year-old Benjamin Pedersen of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Ferrucci has 43 career starts in the NTT IndyCar Series with 18 top 10s and was the 2019 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year.

Last year, Ferrucci became IndyCar’s “Super Sub.” When Jack Harvey crashed at Texas Motor Speedway and was not cleared to drive, Ferrucci jumped in the No. 45 Honda, started last in the 27-car field and finished ninth for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. He drove a second car for Dryer & Reinbold in the 106^th Indianapolis 500 and finished 10^th out of 33 cars.

He filled in the following week at Juncos Hollinger Racing and finished 21^st.

Ferrucci was on standby status for Team Penske after Josef Newgarden had a crash at Iowa Speedway, but Newgarden was later cleared to drive by the IndyCar Medical Staff the following week.

Pedersen is from Denmark and grew up in Seattle. After an Indy Lights season, Pedersen spent last season as part of AJ Foyt Racing. He shadowed the team, got to know the mechanics and engineers, and listened in with the drivers debriefs.

It’s the latest remake of AJ Foyt Racing, so I asked Larry Foyt why he thinks this one will be different than any of the other attempts at returning to glory?

“I think it’s just been too many changes year to year,” Foyt told me. “Being able to announce this multiyear deal with Benjamin is very important for our company, IndyCar is so tight, everything is so close, that if you can get the right driver and engineer working together, get them to really know each other, and we just haven’t been able to put together that consistency. We’ve had different sponsorships, different engineers, and different things over the past couple years.

“That’s the biggest thing I’m excited about is getting to work with a driver knowing we’re going into a multiyear program, building the program around him, something that suits him. I think that’s going to take us a big step forward with the team.”

The biggest piece to the puzzle, however, was signing Ferrucci. He has proven to be fast on every team he has been a part of, and most of those teams are in the back half of the field.

“In any kind of racing, the driver is a huge piece,” Foyt said. “It’s a huge piece, but then also with that is how the driver works with the engineers and things like that. Obviously, that’s something we’re working hard on.

“It’s not like everything’s a total reset. I guess it is because you got two new drivers coming in. We have a lot of core pieces staying in place. We’re just building on that.

I think last year there were tracks we had speed on and there were tracks we struggled on. We’re trying to work on those tracks that we struggled.

“The good thing is Santino is going to get everything out of the car and get us some good finishes, get things rolling back the right direction. I really believe that.

“It’s not that we think consistently we’re going to be surprising people, but there’s no reason that we can’t have some really decent top 10s and even a little better.”

Ferrucci drove four races in IndyCar in 2018 after a controversial incident in an FIA Formula 2 race in Europe.

Team owner Dale Coyne liked what he saw in Ferrucci and brought him back full-time in 2019. His first race of that season, he finished ninth at St. Petersburg. He was seventh in the Indianapolis 500 and had a trio of fourth-place finishes at Texas Motor Speedway, Pocono, and Gateway – all ovals.

He was back with Coyne during the COVID season in 2020 with two sixth-place finishes in back-to-back races at Road American. He was fourth in the Indianapolis 500.

The driver from Connecticut split his time between NASCAR Xfinity Series and NTT IndyCar Series action in 2021. He drove five race sin the No. 45 Hy-Vee car for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, shining once again in the Indy 500 with a sixth-place finish. He was also sixth at Belle Isle the week after the 500.

He drove in just three races in 2022, but with another stellar run in the Indy 500, where he had never finished out of the top 10, Foyt’s team believed he had the speed and fearlessness to help take that car to the front.

“Everybody has watched Santino and we know what he can do on the track,” Foyt said. “We got to know him a little bit before he jumped in at Texas to fill in, did an awesome job. He was there catching up with A.J., and him and I got to meet a little bit. We’ve been staying in touch.

“We both feel like we’ve got something to prove. We were really aligned on what we want to do, work together, and get out there. It really just all came together.

“We’re really excited to have him onboard. I think he’s going to bring a nice veteran presence with his rookie teammate. Just good to have everything settled this early, know where we’re headed. I’m really looking forward to it.”

At 24, Ferrucci already has some impressive experience to build on and has plenty of time to further develop.

As the latest driver in the No. 14, he also realizes he has a lot live up to.

“It’s an honor to be back,” Ferrucci said. “Like Larry said before, I really started to get to spend some time with him at Texas Motor Speedway, with A.J. I think we both feel very strongly about what we can achieve together as a team, building the program.

“It’s just a new chapter for me. It’s nice to not have a last-minute call finally to get in with no practices, go run a race car. It will be nice to build through the winter, see what we can do with this team.

“I have a lot of high hopes. Everybody seems to want to work incredibly hard, including myself. The 14 car, I have to laugh, because it’s one of my lucky numbers, too. As most of you know, absolutely fascinated with 14. I can’t wait to get back after it.”

At 87, AJ Foyt is more than a legend, he’s a national monument of motorsports. Ferrucci looks forward to getting to know more from Foyt because he feels as if he is learning the Old Testament from Moses.

“Honestly the coolest thing, I think Larry also appreciates this, we all have backgrounds in everything,” Ferrucci said. “All of us have driven multiple different cars throughout our years. We have all been at the top, we know how to build a team from nothing.

“I think the coolest thing, when I listen to A.J., the appreciation is there. I like to work on my own stuff as well. I definitely turn wrenches. In the garage, when I was growing up karting, I’d show up at the racetrack in the back of a pickup truck and do my own setups.

“Having the fundamentals, I’m not the typical driver that doesn’t get his hands dirty. There’s a lot of those today that don’t even know how to drive a stick, which is mind-blowing to me.

“I am a very old school mentality. I want to be in the weeds like everybody else, working on things, making sure everybody is doing it together.

“It’s a team, man, at the end of the day. I’m one part of many. We need to function like a team.”

According to Larry Foyt, his legendary father was “all in” on the decision to put Ferrucci in the No. 14.

“A.J. is a huge fan,” Larry Foyt said. “Obviously when you run good at Indianapolis, A.J. takes notice (smiling). Especially on the ovals, A.J. is at pretty much all the oval races for sure.

“I was super impressed with what Santino did at Texas. He’s watched him race at Indy, Gateway. Just Santino will jump in and race anything. He’s just a racer. That certainly catches A.J.’s attention.

“A.J. just really wanted somebody that really wanted to race. I’m really glad we were able to get him.”

Ferrucci will team up with Pedersen, who finished fourth in his only full-time Indy Lights season in 2021. He scored six races out of the 20 on the schedule.

When he decided to learn Foyt’s team from the inside in 2022, it paid off big with a fulltime ride for 2023.

“It kind just happened organically,” Larry Foyt said. “It was one of those things where we met each other, and I think there was a mutual interest in working together, and it was like, ‘Hey, look, why don’t you come feel the team out and kind of see the way an IndyCar weekend works?’

“As the year progressed and we got to know each other, I think just the desire to work together became more and more, and it was like, yeah, this could be a really good fit.

“That’s just where it kind of happened.

“To me it was kind of organically it just kind of grew together like this is a good fit for both of us, and let’s make this happen.”

Pedersen looks at his time with Foyt’s team as an internship.

“I was really eager to do it because I knew IndyCar was going to be the next step,” Pedersen recalled. “I was definitely pushing Larry a little bit, like let me be a part of it; I really want to learn. I think that eagerness went a long way, and obviously Larry let me stay for the whole year, and I learned a lot, especially through Kyle Kirkwood, going through his rookie year.

“Honestly, I know everyone on the team personally pretty well now, and it’s pretty surreal being the fact that at the time I wasn’t even a full driver for AJ Foyt Racing yet.

Just the whole team, super, super welcoming, and what a big help it has been even from my rookie IndyCar test I had earlier in the year with that transition, but more so into this coming year.”

Foyt’s team is also taking a different direction by announcing it won’t run an extra car in the Indianapolis 500, as it has done in the past. Also, for the past three seasons, Dalton Kellett has been part of the program but for now, there is no agreement between the driver from Canada and the team.

Foyt said if the team was going to be increased to three cars, Kellett would be the driver. Otherwise, it’s a two-car operation heading into 2023.

With two young, hungry drivers who want to win, and one of them already proving his capability in the series since 2019, Foyt’s makeover may finally pay off in 2022, which would end a 10-year victory drought.