Much has been made of Josef Newgarden winning back-to-back Indy 500s following his success at the weekend, but he still has a way to go to join A.J. Foyt, Al Unser, Rick Mears and Hélio Castroneves as a four-time winner.
Foyt was the first man to win four, completing the quartet in 1977 after winning in 1961, 1964 and 1967. Autosport was quick to commemorate the feat by putting him on the cover of its June 2 1977 issue.
Foyt was rather quicker around the Indianapolis circuit than correspondent Gordon Kirby was in getting his copy back to the office however. Autosport had to produce a truncated report on the race in that issue – you can read that here – along with a red faced admission that the report was, “Somewhere in Chicago. The reason for this is that Kirby arranged for Teddy Mayer to bring it over to us, and the luckless McLaren chief’s luggage was lost in transit.”
They made up for it a week later with a comprehensive rundown of the events in Indy, Kirby noting that, “The best part about A.J. Foyt’s longtime-coming fourth Indianapolis 500 win was that he really had to work for it.” Though probably not as hard as Kirby, who had to rewrite his report all over again. Oh for a future when you might be able to transmit copy across the world with the stroke of a key. Maybe we could call it email or something?
You can read Kirby’s fuller report on Foyt’s historic achievement here.
