1962 Watson Sprint Car

So, a Chevy V8 Sprint car is faster. That's what A.J. (Anthony Joseph) Foyt saw when he lost to Parnelli Jones and Jim Hurtubise and other competitors in USAC's Sprint Car Division. Foyt wasn't accustomed to losing, but his car's owner A.J. (Abraham Jacob) Watson wasn't willing to yank his sophisticated Offenhauser 4-banger for a lowly production V8. Foyt did. He bought a Chevy, and his crew built a high torque, 500 horsepower, fuel-injected engine that powered him to win. This example is his first Sprint Chevy. Watson was the builder of premier USAC Indy Cars and Sprint Cars; Foyt was the 1961 Indy 500 winner in an Offy-powered Trevis, a Watson car finishing 3rd.

In the 1962 Indy 500, Watson's cars finished 1-2, Rodger Ward winning while Foyt's Trevis lost a wheel, DNF. The Indy 500 was a once-a-year race; Sprint cars ran a full schedule of short track races across the US, thrilling races in which drivers at up-right, busily man-handled steering wheels, powered their cars through constant slides in turns and blasts on short straights, often on dirt. With no flywheel and 500 horsepower coupled to the drive shaft with an in-out gearbox, Sprint cars were exciting and demanding, said to be too hard to drive, but well known for separating boy drivers from real men. The men who drove Sprint cars learned how to drive a race car, where Foyt and other top drivers learned their techniques.