Foyt takes fourth Indy

Press, 31 May 1977, Page 42

Foyt takes fourth Indy

PA-Reuter Indianapolis A. J. Foyt has vowed to seek a fifth Indianapolis 500 mile car racing championship after winning his record fourth on Sunday in the sixty-first running of the world’s richest motor race. “Goddamn, we did it,” the 48-year-old Texan said after the race, adding, “I shouldn’t use God’s name in vain because He was real good to me today.” Foyt’s Coyote-Foyt car took the chequered flag almost 30 seconds ahead of his closest pursuer, Tom Sneva, driving a McLaren-Cosworth, at the end of the three-hour race. Asked if he would return next year to compete in his

twenty-first consecutive Indy classic, Foyt shrugged and said, grinning, “Why not?” Only 11 cars were still running at the end of the contest. The dropouts included Janet Guthrie, the first woman driver to start an Indy 500. She was plagued with engine problems from the start and finished only 27 laps, finishing twenty-seventh in the field of 33. Third behind Foyt and Sneva was Al Unset in a Pamelli-Cos worth. The race was marred by only one minor accident, when Lloyd Ruby ran his Lightening-Offenhauser into an outside retaining wall early in the race. Ruby was not injured but his car was severely damaged.