Gregor Foitek

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.

Today he helps run Foitek Automobile, a family-run Ferrari and Maserati dealership in Altendorf.

1989: EuroBrun and Rial
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, 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. 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. 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.

Complete International Formula 3000 results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap.)

Complete Formula One World Championship results
(key)

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