Winning against the odds at the Formula Ford Festival in 2003 was as much a relief for the driver, Joey Foster, as it was a staging post in his career. The Cornwall-based racer knew it validated his belief in himself as much as anything else and it was a springboard to higher levels of single-seater racing.
Via a stint in the United States, he made it to F3 level in Germany and was shoo-in for a title assault. However, Foster’s career was punctuated by two huge accidents – the first at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz in the Lola F3 machine in 2006 – and both left him with significant spinal injuries. They prompted painful recovery periods.
Foster joined the sportscar world in 2009 in Embassy Racing’s short-lived LMP2 programme, but that ultimately came to naught and rejoining the team – rebranded as Team WFR in 2011 – should have been the shot he needed. However, fate intervened at Eau Rouge in early May with another monster accident when the car failed.
Throughout all those hard months working his way back to fitness, particularly after the Spa shunt, Formula Ford 1600 was his salvation and his reintroduction to motorsport.
He has dominated the Formula Ford landscape. He was the first to take a hat-trick of Walter Hayes Trophy wins from 2003 to 2005 and then he added another in 2022 after a post-meeting penalty meant the on-the-road winner Max Esterson was demoted.
Not only that, Foster had already become the first man to win both the headline and the FF1600 versions of the Formula Ford Festival. Following on from that landmark success in 2003, he added the Kent-engined prize in 2017.
Foster is a hard but fair racer and a man who, at 40 years old, enjoys mixing it with the best of the up-and-coming talent in single-seaters. He provides a great benchmark too for the teenagers in a hurry. If they can topple Foster in a straight fight, then they have achieved something highly prized.
Foster took time out of his busy schedule to tackle the Motorsport News readers’ questions, and we are extremely grateful.
Question: Where did your initial interest in motorsport come from? Was is something that was always in your family?
James Hilton Via email Joey Foster: “I don’t really know. I just remember, from as young as I can recall, I was obsessed with wheels. Even from being in my pram as mum was pushing me down the street in London, I was hanging out of the side and watching the wheels splash through the puddles. I was just obsessed with that motion. It was probably in my mind to advise mum on the set-up of the pram to avoid understeer…”
MN: So when did you move to Cornwall?
JF: “Probably when I was about three years old, so I don’t really remember London. But there was no connection to racing at all in my family at all. I remember my granddad, my mum’s dad, used to sit me down and I would watch grands prix with him, that’s about it. When I was about eight or nine years old, I had done my research and found out that all the F1 drivers had started in karting and I remember being completely gutted that there were no kart tracks close to where I lived in Cornwall to start at.
“My dad used to make wooden soapbox racers to push down the hill and get me going, and then I used to bomb around a field on a grass kart with a five horsepower Briggs & Stratton engine in the back. That kept me going for a few years.”
MN: So who was the poster boy on Joey Foster Jr’s bedroom wall then?
JF: “It was just every F1 driver, I admired them all. Back then, it was all about Nigel Mansell and Red Five. But I always remember supporting the underdog. I loved it when Michael Schumacher made his debut with Jordan and I used to love the Leyton House March team in 1989 and 1990 with Adrian Newey’s designs with Ivan Capelli driving. I thought they were cool.”
MN: It is a long way to go from there to racing yourself…
“A kart track opened in Camborne in Cornwall – near me finally – and we started going there when
