AJ Foyt Racing has announced the hiring of Michael Colliver as the chief engineer for driver Darren Manning's 2008 IndyCar Series entry. The addition of Colliver comes on the same day that Foyt turns 73 years old.

Just reaching the age of 73 is somewhat astounding for Foyt, one of America's most successful racers with four Indy 500 victories along with wins in the Daytona 500 and LeMans. The tough Texan survived a very deadly period in racing and several near death experiences in retirement.

In recent years, he has been attacked by killer bees, and last summer he found himself upside down in a submerged bulldozer, both incidents occurring while he worked on his ranch outside of Houston, Texas.

After several years of poor performance, Foyt has recently begun major improvements to his racing team. Prior to the 2007 season, Foyt turned over the day to day management of his team to son Larry, and the team now moves to Indianapolis for the summer to save travel time from their Waller, Texas base, while also being able to draw from the large contingent of open wheel mechanics who make Indianapolis home.

The 2007 improvements got Foyt's team off the mat, and they are no longer one of the slowest teams on the grid. Last year, Manning scored a pair of top-five finishes while often racing in the top half of the field, something not consistently seen from a Foyt car since 2002 when Airton Dare scored the team's last victory at Kansas Speedway.

By going with a proven engineer like Colliver, Foyt is getting away from a system where he handled the engineering duties largely on his own. The team has (and does), employ various junior engineers and often brought in weekend help like Tim Wardrop to work with the cars, but rarely had the same engineer consistently calling the shots week to week.

Colliver, 43, was initially trained as a bio-medical engineer, graduating from Purdue University in 1988. He was also a driver in various feeder series, before spending six years designing coronary products and receiving two patents for such work. He moved to racing full-time in 1994. In 1996, he was part of Buddy Lazier's Indy 500 winning crew.

Colliver's most recent work was with Jaques Lazier in the 2007 Indy 500, while also doing consulting work for various other race teams. Among the teams (and drivers) Colliver has worked for are: Dreyer and Reinbold Racing (Ryan Briscoe), Access Motorsports (Greg Ray), Kelley Racing (Al Unser, Jr.), Treadway Racing (Sam Schmidt, Arie Luyendyk, Jason Leffler, Felipe Giaffone), Patrick Racing (Adrian Fernandez), and Hemelgarn Racing (Buddy Lazier).

ORS / CAPSIS International