{"id":563928,"date":"2026-03-27T08:17:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T08:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/563928\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T08:17:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T08:17:12","slug":"dale-earnhardt-jr-debates-whether-aj-foyt-deserves-place-in-nascar-hall-of-fame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/563928\/","title":{"rendered":"Dale Earnhardt Jr. debates whether AJ Foyt deserves place in NASCAR Hall of Fame"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you were building out a motorsports Mount Rushmore, A.J. Foyt might be a shoo-in. But when it comes to the NASCAR<\/a> Hall of Fame, Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn\u2019t quite convinced he deserves induction. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this really big conversation around the name A.J. Foyt,\u201d Earnhardt said on Tuesday\u2019s Dale Jr. Download<\/a>. \u201c\u2026 First off, you would need to know what he\u2019s done in the sport statistically. This conversation has come up a couple times in the past several years, and there\u2019s some people who believe A.J. Foyt belongs in the NASCAR Hall of Fame, and there\u2019s some folks who believe he doesn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

\u201cIs A.J. Foyt one of the greatest drivers ever? Yes, I think most people would absolutely agree. I\u2019m not sure he\u2019s a NASCAR Hall of Famer.\u201d <\/p>\n

Foyt, 91, only logged 128 starts in NASCAR from 1963-1994. He had seven wins and 36 top 10s, winning the 1972 Daytona 500. <\/p>\n

Foyt was much more known for his IndyCar Series career. He is No. 1 on the all-time wins list in IndyCar (67) and is the only driver to win seven championships in the open-wheel league. Foyt became the first driver to win four Indianapolis 500s with his win in 1977. <\/p>\n

A.J. Foyt doesn\u2019t have Dale Earnhardt Jr.\u2019s vote for NASCAR HOF<\/p>\n

Earnhardt isn\u2019t sure his statistics are enough top get his vote for the NASCAR Hall of Fame. On top of that, Earnhardt saw Foyt as \u201ccantankerous\u201d and \u201cproblematic\u201d when he competed in NASCAR.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that a lot of people just say, \u2018Hey, he\u2019s one of the greatest drivers ever, and he raced with us, he\u2019s automatic.\u2019 I\u2019m not sure I agree with that,\u201d Earnhardt said. \u201c\u2026 A.J. came and had success and won, but there were also times where he came and was cantankerous and difficult and problematic. \u2026 I think that it would matter if say he has 128 starts, seven wins, but he was a champion \u2014 not literally \u2014 but he championed our sport, he lifted it up. He never cared about that; he was just there to try to win. He ran four to five races a year, he showed up and raced to try to win races. He had some badass freaking race cars.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 It doesn\u2019t weigh a ton into my decision, but I do weigh were they problematic, did they create issues, were they in trouble, did they tear us down, did they lift us up, did they go around talking about how much freaking badass it is to race NASCAR, were they a person that promoted, talked positively about it? That\u2019s gonna be a little bit of a factor of my vote.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you were building out a motorsports Mount Rushmore, A.J. Foyt might be a shoo-in. But when it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-563928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}