When A.J. Foyt was looking for a driver for his No. 14 ABC Supply car, what did the motorsports legend see in Vitor Meira? Talent? Focus? Determination?

The answer is all of the above. Meira’s talent behind the wheel opened the door to the IZOD IndyCar Series but it was his single-minded focus and hard-to-the-core determination that led to his success in the highly competitive series.

Entering his second full season with Foyt’s team in 2011 (2009 was cut to four races with his season-ending back injury in the Indianapolis 500), Meira is looking forward to capitalizing on what the team learned in 2010. Meira says the biggest gains came in communication.

“I think our ABC Supply team made a lot of progress this year in a lot of areas with the first one being communication,” said Meira. “Halfway through the season we started communicating much better in the race, especially on the race strategy between A.J. Foyt, Larry Foyt and chief engineer Jeff Britton. We started going through some pre-race procedures that also helped our communication in the race. I think car setup and how it evolved was also a big improvement. We can communicate and do whatever, but if the car’s not good the race isn’t going to be good -- so improving the car’s preparation and setup was key.”

Meira kicked off the 2010 season with a podium finish in his native Brazil where he finished third and was the top-finishing Brazilian in the Sao Paulo Indy 300!

“Besides it being in my home country, there was so much in question at the time because it was my first race after the back injury,” said Meira, who counts it as his highlight of the season. “With so many questions, having the result there was awesome!”

It turned out to be his best finish of the season that saw Meira amass six top-10 finishes. Ironically his second best finish of the season—sixth--came in his ‘American’ hometown of Miami which was the final race of the season. Five of his top-10 finishes came on oval tracks. Meira finished 12th in the standings which was the best series’ finish for Foyt’s team since 2002.

In 2009, Meira began his first season with A.J. Foyt’s ABC Supply Racing team with high hopes. A top-10 finish in their first outing in St. Petersburg, Florida boded well. But problems in Long Beach and Kansas short-circuited the momentum of the opening race.

The 93rd running of the Indianapolis 500 would prove to be Meira’s most spectacular race of the season but for all of the wrong reasons. Starting 14th, Meira was running in the top third of the field, biding his time until a disastrous pit stop on lap 134. With fuel hose still attached, Meira was released early triggering a blazing pit fire. He dropped his helmet visor down as he coolly waited for the crews to put out the fire; when the engine was restarted, he rejoined the field without losing a lap!

However the miscue dropped him to 21st. In the next 40 laps he advanced to 17th but dropped back to 19th when he and Raphael Matos crashed entering turn one. Meira’s spectacular impact and subsequent rim-riding of the wall caused two broken vertebrae in his lower back. He was sidelined for the season.

“The race was going pretty good until we had the fire problem in the pits,” said Meira. “Then we crashed and that was the turning point for the year. With the crash I broke my back—two vertebrae--and my focus totally changed from that point on.

“My focus was to get healed fast so I could help the team however was possible,” he continued. “A.J., Larry and the whole ABC Supply crew was very supportive. I don’t know of a team that would do what they did for me. Right after the race they said whenever you’re healed just come back, you have a seat in the car, and let’s start working on next year and so forth. That made, I think, the biggest difference in my recovery and on my state of mind because, imagine having a crash, having a broken back and not having a seat!”

Several drivers subbed in the no. 14 including Paul Tracy and A.J. Foyt IV but it was Ryan Hunter-Reay who was tapped to finish out the season. Hunter-Reay did finish in the top-10 three times for Foyt, including a fourth place run at Mid-Ohio.

Quiet and unassuming, Meira describes himself as ‘a normal guy with a cool job.’ He is anything but a normal guy. Indeed, watching him drive a race car is at once thrilling and inspiring. Single-minded and focused, Meira has earned the respect of his peers with his race craft and the admiration of his fans with his hard-charging, no-holds-barred style.

“My goal is to win, and by that I mean to give 100% no matter what is happening,” said Meira. “I finished second many times but there were races where I finished fourth or fifth and I felt good about them because I gave 100% and we got the most out of the car that day. Whether it’s in races or in the championship, if we are getting top-fives, it’s because we are putting ourselves in position to win which is what you have to do before you can win. Then the wins will come.”

A.J. Foyt puts it more simply: Vitor gives 110% all the time.

“He is hustling all the time, even when the car isn’t 100%,” said Foyt. “Sometimes that got him into trouble because it’s hard to carry these cars, but I like his attitude. I believe our team can give him the car he needs to win races,” said Foyt, IndyCar’s all-time winning driver. “He has the focus, drive and talent that separate the good drivers from the great ones.”

Meira would certainly count Foyt among the great ones. He admired his boss long before he came to work for him.

“A.J. is one driver who has seen it all and has won in everything,” said Meira. “We were talking in his office one day and he told me about racing with [Juan Manuel] Fangio and Jim Clark and it blew me away because I had no idea he’d done that. He has done so much and yet he still has the curiosity, the interest in racing after all these years. Amazing.”

Meira may not approach Foyt’s record for longevity which includes 35 straight starts at Indy, but he is certainly the best IndyCar driver looking for his first victory.

In 114 career starts through 2010, Meira has won two pole positions, led 442 laps and posted 28 top-five finishes, including two second-place finishes in the Indianapolis 500 in 2005 and in 2008. He claimed 62 top-10 finishes and earned over $8 million in prize money.

However, when Meira broke into the IndyCar Series in August, 2002, it was run entirely on oval tracks. It was a daunting career switch for a driver who grew up on the road circuits of South America and honed his craft on Europe’s historic road courses while still a teenager.

“That was at a crucial point in my career,” Meira revealed. “I was very apprehensive because I had to make a decision to either keep trying or forget about it and get a job. I had to try to make it work, but I was very apprehensive about my future. Getting into IndyCar racing was one thing, but being able to do it for a living was another thing.

“It was so different from what I’d done—it was so much more intense,” Meira recalled. “By the end of the race I felt exhausted mentally and physically compared to previous races I’d done. The races on the ovals were so close and so nerve-wracking back then, I was freaking out.”

How did he do it?

“When the races were about to start, I’d ask myself the same thing,” said Meira, chuckling. “For instance at Texas, nobody says good luck to you; they all say ‘Be safe.’ Sometimes it’s madness out there.

“You have to shut that off…everyone gets scared. A.J. has said that if you aren’t scared you aren’t driving hard enough. But some guys control it better than others and we have to. We do it because we love to do it. I’ve been driving for a long time, so now I know what to expect and what to do when things happen.”

What are his top three most memorable races? The two Indy 500s in which he finished second (2005 to Dan Wheldon and 2008 to Scott Dixon) and the 2004 race at Kansas Speedway where he lost by five thousandths of a second to his teammate Buddy Rice

“My third most memorable race? It had to be Kansas in 2004—up to 2008 it was the second-closest finish in IndyCar history and it was the closest I ever came to winning,” said Meira, who was driving for the Rahal-Letterman team. “We had been leading but we had a clutch problem on the green flag pit stops so Buddy Rice was able to overtake me and in the last ten laps, we went back and forth trading the lead. I was on the outside and lost by three inches. We were teammates—I raced him more fair (maybe didn’t squeeze him as much) because for the team it didn’t matter who won. The worse thing would have been if we both crashed going for the win. I would never do that.”

Prior to his IndyCar career, Meira had his sights set on Formula One, a natural goal for a young race driver whose native Brazil was home to one of F-1’s greatest drivers Ayrton Senna. Senna was a hero to Meira and an inspiration for his career.

“I had admired him because of his will, his determination,” said Meira who was driving go-karts at the time Senna was killed in 1994. “He wanted to win through his own efforts. He was always challenging himself to be better than everyone else but mostly he was challenging himself to be better than he was.”

Meira’s racing career began with a go-kart—his “favorite present ever received”-- from his parents when he was 11 years old. “I liked it straight away,” said Meira, “but as a kid of 12 or 13 years old, you can’t really say, ‘Oh that’s what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.’ I knew I liked it a lot and I was having a lot of fun and I was going to keep doing it until I was not having fun anymore. And the feeling is still the same.”

Meira won the Brazilian championship and was runner-up in the South American title run. At 17, he moved to England to compete in the British Formula Ford Series, placing fourth in 1996 and 1997. The next year he moved up to the British Formula Renault Series where he finished fifth. In 1999, he competed in the South American F3 Series where he won the rookie of the year title. The next year, he won eight races and the title and landed a ride in the European F3000 Series in 2001.

“My first year in F3000 in Europe, I raced against the likes of Felipe Massa [current F-1 driver for Ferrari] who was in his second year and he won the title,” said Meira, who finished fifth that year. “For me, it was a good year for a first year and I was very encouraged going into the second year. But the championship had only eight races and in three of the first four races, I had retired with mechanical problems. In F-3000, if you don’t win in the first year, you have to win in the second year, otherwise you have no chance of doing what you want. So at that point I knew my championship was done. Half the series was done so I had no real hope to win the championship so I took the rest of the sponsorship money I had and came here to America and tried to sort something out and luckily that came around.”

The Brazilian’s IndyCar career began in August, 2002 when he drove for the Menard team; three races and two months later, he won the pole and finished third in the season finale at Texas Motor Speedway.
He continued with Menard the next year driving a partial season and was awarded the IRL’s first Rising Star Award given in honor of the late Tony Renna. In 2004, he joined the Rahal-Letterman team for two seasons. He finished in the top-10 in the driver standings both years, capping 2005 by finishing second to Dan Wheldon in the Indy 500.

In 2006, he moved to Panther Racing and achieved his highest points ranking to date—fifth place behind the Penske and Ganassi teams. He drove for Panther Racing for two more years before being released at the end of 2008, the same season in which he finished second in the Indy 500 again, this time winning a record $1.273,215 million for that single result. His performance also garnered him the Scott Brayton Driver Trophy at the 500 Victory Celebration.

Meira didn’t spend much time as a free agent because he was quickly signed by Foyt for 2009. Both men hold the utmost respect for each other and together they plan to make the 2011 season the most memorable one to date for the ABC Supply Racing team.

Meira, who married the beautiful Adriana Schettini in March, 2008, lives in Miami along with Adriana’s daughter Luiza from a previous marriage. The couple are expecting their first child together in May!

When not racing, Meira likes to compete in triathlons -- athletic contests in which participants compete without stopping in three successive events: long-distance swimming, cycling and running. In November, 2010 he competed in the Foster-Grant Ironman 70.3, the national championship for triathletes held in Clearwater, FL. Competing as a celebrity triathlete, Meira posted a strong, competitive showing in his category against the professionals. It was a highlight in his ‘other’ career as a triathlete. Meira is also a regular competitor in the Mini-Marathon at Indy in May.

One of the fittest drivers in the series, Meira works out regularly. His regimen includes daily runs, visits to the gym (takes off one weekend day) and he alternates between cycling and running shifter karts in the afternoon at a local track to balance out his gym workout.

Meira’s activities aren’t limited to racing and triathlons because he is quite interested in charitable work. He is a Special Olympics ambassador and holds a Brasilia Ambassador award.

Reflecting on his IndyCar career and the changes that have taken place over the last nine years, Meira noted that he has changed, but not in the way one would think about a successful IndyCar driver.

“I don’t think I’ve changed that much—not in the way I try and sometimes over-try,” he said with a smile. “But I did get better about thinking more during the race and thinking further ahead in the race. What hasn’t changed is that I have to leave the race happy with myself— and the only way to do that is to do the best I can no matter what the circumstances.”

Meira’s qualities of talent, focus and determination are often attributed to his team owner Foyt who carved out a legendary career as a driver over a span of five decades. So perhaps the best answer to that question: What did Foyt see in Meira?

Himself!