Rick Mears – the last driver to win four Indianapolis 500s – has a deep respect for the first four-time Indy 500 winner, A.J. Foyt.

“He ran when men were men,” Mears said. “He’s a hell of a guy.”

Mears attempted to qualify Bill Simpson’s pink Indy car in the 1977 500 Mile Race but failed to make the field. The young driver from Bakersfield, Calif., stayed to watch the race and witnessed Foyt’s historic fourth Indy 500 win.

“I was standing in the infield in Turn 1 when Gordon Johncock’s car blew up while leading,” Mears recalled. “Gordy pulled it to a stop, got out of the car and Foyt went on and won.  A.J. was still the one to beat.”

In Mears’ rookie season he thought he was going to experience Foyt’s legendary temper face-to-face. What actually happened was something that proved he had earned Foyt’s respect. Mears was running fifth in a race and was having the best performance of his rookie season. Foyt was the leader at the time and Mears saw him approaching his car from behind to put him down a lap.

“I thought I would not do anything stupid and just run my pattern and by the time he gets to me he would see which way I’m running, figure his way around and he’ll go by,” Mears said. “I wasn’t holding him up or anything. He catches me and follows me for a couple laps, passes me and goes on.  I didn’t think anything about it.”

Mears finished fifth and was thrilled with the finish before a crewmember told him Foyt wasn’t happy.

“One of the guys on the team said, ‘What did you do to A.J.?’ ” Mears recalled. “I said, ‘I didn’t do anything to A.J.’ He said, ‘Well, he came by here and was all ticked off and said tell that Mears if he ever does that to me again I’ll stick him in the fence.’

“Here I was this rookie that had evidently ticked off A.J. and I was scared to death basically.”

Mears was certain he did nothing wrong in the previous race and didn’t understand why Foyt was upset with him. The next time the two were together was at a race at Ontario Motor Speedway in California.

“Here is A.J. standing at the fence signing autographs and I’ve got to walk by him to get to the car,” Mears remembered. “I’m thinking, ‘Oh Man, here we go.’ As I walked by I patted him on the shoulder and kept going. I heard him say, ‘Hey, Mears.’  I turned around and walked back up to him and wondered what he was going to say or do. He walked right up to me and put his arm around his shoulder and said, ‘Man, we had a hell of a good race the other day, didn’t we?’

“I realized that I had earned his respect by not doing anything stupid to get out of the way. I also realized that A.J.’s bark was bigger than his bite.”

Mears would be known for his coolness on the race track; Foyt was known for his fiery personality outside of the car.

“A.J. Foyt was ‘The Man,’” Mears said. “I was just getting started as a snot-nosed kid so I was definitely intimidated by him.”

Two years after Foyt’s fourth Indy 500 win Mears scored his first win at Indianapolis. In 1991, he would join Foyt and Al Unser as the only drivers to win four times.