Gregor Foitek (born 27 March 1965) is a Swiss former racing driver.
He won the 1986 Swiss Formula 3 Championship. Moving up to Formula 3000 he was widely blamed for causing a race-stopping crash at Brands Hatch in 1988, the restart of which led to a second major crash on the first lap in which Johnny Herbert sustained major leg injuries. Foitek participated in 22 Formula One Grands Prix, debuting on 26 March 1989. He scored no championship points.
He later made two CART starts for Foyt Enterprises in 1992 but was knocked out of both races by mechanical issues. Info from Wiki
Bio by Tommaso Inca
Gregor Foitek, Formula One in 1989 and 1990:
When the underrated and hypertalented Stefano Modena left the EuroBrun F1 team for greener pastures at Brabham, and Oscar Larrauri simply got dumped as EuroBrun scaled back to a one-car team, Foitek made his move up to F1. With his reputation, the Modern Motor 1989 GP guide warned viewers to watch for action should Foitek qualify. They needn’t have bothered. Walter Brun’s EuroBrun began the year with the ER188B, a revamp of the 1988 car, coupled to a Judd V8 engine, and while others had teething troubles with new cars in the opener at Brazil, Foitek managed to pre-qualify and in Friday qualifying was actually 24th. A blown engine in the second session meant he ended up 29th, and with a DNQ next to his name.
After that, though, the DNPQs were the stats which kept mounting up, as the new EuroBrun chassis simply took too long to materialise and the old car was inevitably outclassed. To Foitek’s credit, he was never too far off the mark, and was actually as high as 6th in pre-qualifying at Imola and Mexico City, and 7th at Phoenix, Montreal and Silverstone, even though he destroyed one chassis in Canada after a big shunt. By the German GP, the new ER189 chassis had arrived, as well as Jagermeister sponsorship, but it didn’t mean any improvement. In fact, things only got worse, as the new car wasn’t up to scratch, and the old one (which the team still carried around) became more and more obsolete. After failing to record a time in pre-qualifying at Spa, Foitek left the team and was replaced by Larrauri.
Still, he was on the fringes of F1, and when Christian Danner left the stagnant Rial team after the Portuguese GP, Foitek stepped in to drive the ARC2 with its Cosworth engine. And even though Rial was guaranteed an automatic start in qualifying proper, by this stage the German team was in terminal decline, and Foitek could only qualify 29th and last at Jerez. He wasn’t helped by another big accident, caused this time by a rear wing breakage. This was enough to put off someone even as courageous and daring as Foitek, and he abandoned the team after this one solitary effort.
Meanwhile, at the end of the 1989 season, the Brabham team was in dire straits. Only a year after they had returned to F1, their team owner had been imprisoned, and the team had little money. The McKeever Group led by Mike Earle, the former boss of the Onyx team, was called in to try to negotiate a buyer for Brabham, and in the meantime McKeever signed Foitek to drive for Brabham in 1990. However, soon McKeever did find a buyer for Brabham days before the season opener in Phoenix. That buyer was the Japanese-based Middlebridge Group. Only problem was, Middlebridge wanted Aussie David Brabham to partner Stefano Modena at Brabham. Foitek was nowhere in their plans. On the other hand, Brabham wanted to take some time to acclimatise himself before moving in, so Foitek was reluctantly kept for the first two races of the year.
Driving the 1989-model Brabham BT58 with a Judd engine at Phoenix, Foitek qualified for his first GP start in 23rd place. But true to his reputation, on his 40th lap, failing to see Olivier Grouillard’s Osella alongside him on the back straight, he moved across the Frenchman and got pitched into the concrete wall. He was lucky not to be hurt. Then in Brazil he qualified 23rd again, but retired with transmission problems. By now Brabham was ready to take over, and Foitek’s tenure was over. However, by dint of coincidence, another team struggling financially at the end of 1989 was Onyx itself. Swiss enthusiast Peter Monteverdi had bought out the team, and led an amateurish consortium which included Gregor’s father Karl Foitek himself, who owned 25%. As a result, it doesn’t take a genius to work out why Stefan Johansson, who’d even scored a podium for Onyx at Estoril in 1989, was not-so-politely shown the door after Brazil, and why Foitek then stepped into the Onyx ORE1B for round 3 at Imola.
With this car being only a revamp of the 1989 model, Onyx had an advantage of sorts, and Foitek and J.J. Lehto could at least qualify regularly for a few races. At Imola, Foitek’s engine failed after the Gregor had started 24th, but his day of days came at the next round in Monaco, where he qualified 20th. Tom Prankerd tells us that towards the end of the race, due to the high attrition rate, Foitek was actually running 6th, and looking set to score a World Championship point. He had been battling hard with Eric Bernard’s Larrousse for some time, but had managed to stave off the attacks of the French driver. But then Foitek left the door open, and Bernard dived for the gap. Gregor tried to close it, but not in time. The Larrousse shunted the Onyx off the track and into retirement, and Foitek ended up being classified 7th, 6 laps down.
In Canada, he qualified 21st but retired after he over-revved his engine. Interestingly, he was the last retirement, a massive 43 laps from the end! Then he came home 15th in Mexico, 2 laps down, having started 23rd. This was the only time Gregor would actually finish a race. It was a fine effort considering he’d been hampered by brake problems. But then the Onyx started being overhauled by other cars, and Foitek failed to qualify in France and Britain. He started last in Germany but spun off, and was slowest in qualifying in Hungary and didn’t make the grid. By this stage, though, the Onyx operation was becoming more and more ludicrous by the minute.
Monteverdi wanted to name the team after himself, had previously planned to relocate it into his motoring museum in Switzerland as a working exhibit and there was even talk of Monteverdi raiding his classic car collection for replacement parts! Regardless, money was certainly running short, and parts well past their use-by date were regularly put on the cars, often resulting in dangerous breakages. Refusing to let Gregor drive what had become something of a death trap, Karl Foitek pulled himself and his son out of the team, and Onyx/Monteverdi were no more.
Bio by Stephen Latham
Born on the 27th March, 1965, in Zurich, Switzerland, Gregor Foitek participated in 22 Grands Prix (with seven starts) between 1989–1990 for EuroBrun, Rial, Brabham and Onyx and later had two CART drives for Foyt Enterprises.
He won the Swiss F3 championship in 1986 with a Squadra Foitek Dallara F386 but despite its title the races were not held in Switzerland, due to the country having a ban on motorsports, and they took place in neighbouring countries. He also competed in Italian and German F3 championships, finishing fifth at Nurburgring, seventh at Norisring and Imola and took a win at Erding Airield. There was also an F3000 outing with Horag Hotz Racing’s Lola T86/50 but he did not finish.
The following year saw him move into F3000 with Genoa Racing’s March 87B but his only finishes were fifteenth and tenth at Vallelunga and Spa. However, after contesting eight races with the team, in September he appeared with GA Motorsport and in the three races with their Lola T87/50, he was twelfth at Autodromo Dino Ferrari, eighth at Le Mans and fourteenth at Jarama. In December he had his first taste of an F1 car, when he tested a Minardi at Estoril. He continued into 1988 with GA Motorsport and though he retired in the first round at Jerez, he took pole and won the second race at Vallelunga, ahead of Bertrand Gachot, Olivier Grouillard, Roberto Moreno and Mark Blundell. He did not qualify at Pau but was fourth in the next two rounds at Silverstone and Monza although he retired in the following five rounds. Unfortunately, his career will always be overshadowed by the major crash at Brands Hatch, in which Johnny Herbert sustained severe leg injuries that nearly ended his career.
In 1989 he made the leap into Formula 1 with the EuroBrun team but, having run two cars in the previous season (for Stefano Modena and Oscar Larrauri), the team ran a single car for Gregor, while the ER188 was modified slightly to take a Judd V8 engine. He made his debut in Brazil but, with the large number of entries, thirteen cars had to enter pre-qualifying. The team had performed poorly in 1988 and Gregor had to enter the session using the ER188B, which was an update of the previous season’s car. However, although he managed to get through pre-qualifying and into the main session, he failed to qualify for the race and this was the only time he got through pre-qualifying all season. By mid-season the team unveiled their new ER189 and for its debut at the German GP the car was presented in the orange Jägermeister livery but unfortunately Gregor failed to pre-qualify the car, both here at Hockenheim and at the Hungaroring. He was back in the ER188 for the next race at Spa but left the team after this and from Monza onwards Oscar Larrauri took over but he also never pre-qualified for any of the five remaining races. Gregor stepped in to replace Christian Danner at Rial for the Spanish GP, but his rear wing broke at high speed, causing him to crash heavily, and he immediately quit the team.
He started 1990 with Brabham but only contested two races, retiring at Phoenix due to an accident then a malfunctioning transmission ended his Brazilian GP. At the next race at San Marino, David Brabham was in the car and Gregor was with the Moneytron Onyx team, replacing Stefan Johansson. Onyx began life as Onyx Race Engineering in late 1978 as a partnership between Mike Earle and Greg Field. Earle had had extensive experience in open-wheel racing, running the successful Church Farm Racing team in F3, F2 and F5000, as well as previously working with David Purley in the LEC racing team in Formula Atlantic, F2, European F5000 and occasional F1 races. Prior to them entering Formula One, Paul Shakespeare had purchased the majority shares of the team in 1988 and this provided Onyx with the much needed injection of cash to make the step up. The team was further boosted by sponsorship from Marlboro and Moneytron, a company owned by Belgian Jean-Pierre Van Rossem and he later purchased all of Shakespeare’s shares and became the majority owner. The team became Onyx Grand Prix and respected engineer Alan Jenkins was commissioned to design the team’s first F1 car, which was built and run from the team’s base near Littlehampton in West Sussex. In 1990, Swiss car collector/manufacturer Peter Monteverdi purchased 50% of the shares, with Karl Foitek (Gregor’s father, who was the owner of Foitek Automobile) buying 25% and Brun Frei the remaining 25%. Mike Earle left and Onyx became a Swiss owned team and was based in the country and Gregor raced alongside JJ Lehto. Racing the ORE-1 at San Marino, engine issues ended his race though Letho had set fifteenth quickest time and finished in twelfth place. Then, at Monaco two weeks later, Gregor drove superbly, ahead of Lehto throughout the weekend and also recorded the fifteenth quickest time on the Saturday. He was involved in a race long battle for a sixth place points finish with Eric Bernard’s Lola Lamborghini, until they collided near the end of the race but despite retiring he was classified seventh as he had completed 90% of the race distance. At the next round in Canada, Gregor ran strongly in the top ten until lap 54, when an engine issue caused his retirement with only fourteen laps remaining and in Mexico he suffered a long brake pedal and finished fifteenth, while also nursing a damaged undertray. Unfortunately, the lack of resources began to tell on the team as the season wore on. After struggling to find grip in France, he and Lehto qualified twenty ninth and twenty seventh and failed to beat the twenty six car grid cut off. Both cars again did not qualify at Silverstone and during this time, the team’s name changed to Monteverdi Onyx Formula One. Although both drivers managed to qualify in Germany, Gregor retired after spinning off on lap nineteen and though Lehto finished he was unclassified. Matters would come to a head at the Hungarian GP in August and after both drivers failed to qualify, it proved the final straw and Gregor and his father left the team and the team ceased operations after this. It was said the car was then retired and kept by Peter Monteverdi in his private collection and maintained in full running order and used in occasional demonstration runs.
With no seats in Formula One available he moved to the World Sportcar Championship and in two outings in 1991 with Kremer Racing’s Porsche 962 he, Tiff Needell and Tomas Lopez retired at Le Mans though he and Lopez finished eighth in the 430 km Magny-Cours. He signed in the following year with Gilmore Racing in the Indy Car World Series but he suffered mechanical issues in the two races contested for them, at Surfers Paradise and Long Beach, and retired from both. He was team principal for a team in 1995’s Ferrari Challenge and drove in the European Ferrari Challenge himself in 2002. In 2007, Gregor and his brothers Reto and Frank purchased the family company, Foitek Automotive, after their father retired and they run the business, which is situated in Altendorf and is specialised in Maseratis and Ferraris.
Gallery F3/F3000 F1 Other
