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.
