Gregor Foitek

Gregor Foitek

Born	(1965-03-27) 27 March 1965 Zürich, Switzerland
Formula One World Championship career
Nationality	Swiss
Active years	1989–1990
Teams	EuroBrun, Rial, Brabham, Onyx
Entries	22 (7 starts)
Championships	0
Wins	0
Podiums	0
Career points	0
Pole positions	0
Fastest laps	0
First entry	1989 Brazilian Grand Prix
Last entry	1990 Hungarian Grand Prix

Gregor Foitek (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʁeːɡoːɐ̯ ˈfo.iːtɛk]; born 27 March 1965) is a Swiss former racing driver. He won the 1986 Swiss Formula 3 Championship. 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.

He helps run Foitek Automobile, a family-run Ferrari and Maserati dealership in Altendorf.^[1]

Foitek made his debut at the 1989 Brazilian Grand Prix, however with turbos now banned from F1, the number of entries had grown to 39. Thirteen cars had to enter pre-qualifying and with EuroBrun having performed poorly in 1988, Foitek had to enter the session using the ER188B, which was an update of the 1988 car. Foitek only got to the main qualifying session once, at the first race in Brazil, where he then failed to qualify.^[2] After 11 rounds Foitek quit the EuroBrun team.

At the Spanish Grand Prix, Foitek was called up to replace Christian Danner at the Rial team.^[3] However, the Rial team were having a bad season and several crew members had left the team. Furthermore, although it was assured of a place in the main qualifying session, the Rial ARC2 was uncompetitive, some five seconds off the next slowest car. In his one race with the team, Foitek's rear wing broke at high speed and he crashed heavily. He immediately quit the team.

Foitek started the 1990 season with Brabham, filling in for the first two races whilst David Brabham prepared himself to move up to F1.^[4] He qualified for both races, making his first F1 start in Phoenix, but didn't finish either race.^[2]

Once David Brabham moved up to take his F1 seat, Foitek moved across to Onyx^[4] (now part-run by his father Karl)^[5] to replace Stefan Johansson, who had left the team having been unhappy at the way the team was run. Foitek qualified for his first four races with Onyx^[2] and was classified 7th at Monaco^[2] (although he was running 6th late on but retired after a collision with Eric Bernard when being overtaken).^[5] The lack of resources began to tell for Onyx as the season wore on, with Foitek only qualifying once in the following four races^[2] - as did his teammate, JJ Lehto, at Hockenheim where they shared the back row of the grid - before Onyx folded after the Hungarian Grand Prix.^[5]

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)

(key)

† Driver did not finish the race, but was still classified as they completed 90% of the race distance.

• Foitek Automobile
• Grandprix.com profile
• Gregor Foitek driver statistics at Racing-Reference
• Gregor Foitek career summary at DriverDB.com