Pat Foster
Pat Foster made his lasting mark on drag racing both as a designer/fabricator and driver. As a designer/builder, Pat was instrumental in creating and building cars for names such as Kenny Bernstein, Ed McColloch, Larry Minor, Joe Amato, Don Schumacher, and Don Prudhomme, to name a few. One of Pat’s first rides was in the “Addict” top fuel dragster owned by Rocky Childs and Jim Albert. Since that time, Pat lost count of the number and name of the dragsters he drove, but between top fuel dragsters and funny cars, he drove over 50 different drag racing cars. The list of funny car owners Pat shoed for reads like a who’s-who in drag racing, including but not limited to John Bateman’s “Atlas Oil Tool” cars (funny car and top fuel dragsters), Roland Leong’s “Hawaiian”, Don Cook’s “Damn Yankee”, Don Kirby’s “Beach City Corvette”, and the Super Shops Plymouth Arrows. Pat worked for and with some of the other great car builders in the sport, including John Butera, Woody Gilmore, and H&H Racecraft’s Jim Hume. Not exactly shy, Pat was very outspoken over the years regarding driver safety, innovative designs, and various other subjects. One of Pat’s big pushes was to redefine the early funny cars roll from exhibition machines to real race cars. In 1968, Pat went to work for Mickey Thompson as constructor-crew chief for Mickey’s Ford Land Speed Record program. When the program lost its funding the next year, Mickey asked Pat what they should do with all the parts they had accumulated. Pat’s answer was to design and build a pair of revolutionary SOHC-powered funny cars with dragster type chassis, narrow cages, zoom he’s, un-sprung rear-ends, and Mustang bodies fitted over all of this. The result was a pair of funny cars driven by Pat and Danny Ongais that were absolutely invincible at the time. Later Pat returned to Woody’s shop where among many others, he built the only rear engine funny car to ever win a major event for Jim Dunn. Pat didn’t confine his creativeness to just dragsters and funny cars. He was involved in the construction of John Mazmanian’s historic AA/GS 1941 Willys and Bob Pennell is BB/GS Anglia and other such creations. One of his wilder creations was Doug Thorley’s Corvair funny car, which Doug drove to the winner’s circle at the 1967 Nationals. While he retired from driving, Pat did not give up building cars he is just took a bit of a different direction. He re-created some of the more famous cars from the past. Pat completed the reproduction of Beebe and Mulligan 1969 top fuel dragster in such a masterful way that it became the envy of all who have seen it. Foster reproduced one of Jack Chrisman’s famous sidewinders.