Article May 30, 2011 Issue

At the wheel with a professional race-car driver

By Kim Shippey, Senior Writer

Joe Foster has been racing professionally for over 25 years and has been competing at the top levels of American sports car racing since 1998. At the age of 11 he started racing go-karts, paid for by a job as a dishwasher in a local restaurant in his hometown of Solana Beach, California, and at 17 took himself off to England to carve a niche for himself in the British Formula Three series. He returned to the United States to earn a graduate degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and spent the next ten years as chief driving instructor at the Panoz Racing School in Atlanta, Georgia.

While Joe was teaching at the racing school, one of his students was actor Patrick Dempsey. They have now been racing together for six years as co-drivers in the Dempsey Racing team, and  in January of this year they finished on the podium in “The 24 Hours of Daytona.”

Joe lives with his wife, Claudette, and daughters Kyra and Delaney, in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and they attend First Church of Christ, Scientist, Atlanta. 

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