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Britton Joins Foyt Racing

Jeff Britton has joined A.J. Foyt Racing as chief engineer of the No. 14 ABC Supply Co. car driven by Vitor Meira. Britton will be renewing an alliance with Meira as they worked together in 2005 when Meira finished second in the Indianapolis 500 for the first time, reports Indycar.com.

“I’m very excited to be joining the A.J. Foyt Racing family,” Britton said. “I’m looking forward to being able to rely on the wealth of experience that A.J. has and also working with Vitor again. He makes things very easy for engineers because he can boil down the problems of the car to the biggest problem. He enables you to work on one thing at a time to really make progress in setting up the race car.

“The other thing is his attitude; he has the most positive attitude of any driver I’ve ever worked with. He never gets upset in the car, always has his emotions in check and is constantly trying to push the team in a positive direction.”

Respect is mutual.

“Jeff was the first guy that I had big results — with the first time that I finished second at the (Indy) 500 was with him,” Meira said. “We had three cars on the team. Buddy (Rice) and Danica (Patrick) were in the other two cars and we were much faster than both of them so I always thought that we worked well together. I like the way he works. He’s very quiet, you tell him what the car is doing and what the problems are, then he asks you to leave and he thinks about it and comes up with a solution. It’s very simple. I think it will be good, very good.”

Team director Larry Foyt interviewed several candidates before hiring Britton, who brings 15 years of IZOD IndyCar Series experience to the team.

“In the end, I liked the fact that Jeff worked well with Vitor and together they had some good results,” Foyt said. “With the limited practice time that you have on race weekends, it really helps to bring in someone who can communicate well with Vitor, so we aren’t starting from square one. With Jeff having been around the IRL since its inception, he and A.J. have a lot of common experience and that also was important in our final decision.”

Britton’s experience includes stints with Treadway Racing, Kelley Racing (when driver Scott Sharp won the 2001 pole at Indianapolis), Access Motorsports (Greg Ray) and Mo Nunn Racing (Tora Takagi). In 2005, he joined Rahal Letterman Racing, where he worked with Meira in 2005, Rice in 2006 and Sharp in 2007. Britton moved to Vision Racing in 2008, where he spent the past two years working with Ed Carpenter.