Mario Andretti
Mario Gabriele Andretti is an American former racing driver who competed in Formula One from to, and IndyCar from 1964 to 1994. Andretti won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in with Lotus, and won 12 Grands Prix across 14 seasons. In American open-wheel racing, Andretti won four IndyCar National Championship titles and the Indianapolis 500 in 1969; in stock car racing, he won the Daytona 500 in 1967. In endurance racing, Andretti is a three-time winner of the 12 Hours of Sebring.
Born in modern-day Croatia, Andretti and his family were displaced from Istria during the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus and eventually emigrated to Nazareth, Pennsylvania in 1955. He began dirt track racing with his twin brother Aldo four years later, with Andretti progressing to USAC Championship Car in 1964. In open-wheel racing, he won back-to-back USAC titles in 1965 and 1966, also finishing runner-up in 1967 and 1968. He also contested stock car racing in his early career, winning the 1967 Daytona 500 with Holman-Moody. He took his first major sportscar racing victory at the 12 Hours of Sebring that year with Ford. Andretti debuted in Formula One at the in with Lotus, where he qualified on pole position. He contested several further Grands Prix with Lotus in, when he won his third USAC title and the Indianapolis 500. In, Andretti took his maiden podium finish at the with STP, driving a privateer March 701. He signed for Ferrari that year, winning at Sebring again.
Andretti took his maiden victory in Formula One at the season-opening in, on debut for Ferrari. He took his third Sebring victory the following year. After part-time roles for Ferrari and Parnelli in and, respectively, Andretti joined the latter full-time for after finishing runner-up in the SCCA Continental Championship. He moved back to Lotus in, winning the season-ending and helping develop the 78. Andretti won four Grands Prix in, finishing third in the World Drivers' Championship. He won the title in after achieving six victories, becoming the second World Drivers' Champion from the United States. After winless and campaigns with Lotus, he moved to Alfa Romeo in. Following two fill-in appearances for Williams and Ferrari in, Andretti retired from Formula One with 12 wins, 18 pole positions, 10 fastest laps and 19 podiums.
Andretti returned to full-time IndyCar racing in 1982, placing third in the standings with Patrick, amongst winning the Michigan 500. After finishing third again with Newman/Haas in his 1983 campaign, he won his fourth IndyCar title in 1984, 15 years after the previous and his first sanctioned by CART. He won the Pocono 500 in 1986 and remained with Newman/Haas until 1994; his victory at Phoenix in 1993 made him the oldest winner in IndyCar history, aged 53, as well as the first driver to win a race in four different decades. Andretti retired with 52 wins, 65 pole positions, and 141 podiums in IndyCar. His 111 official victories on major circuits across several motorsport disciplines saw his name become synonymous with speed in American popular culture. His sons, Michael and Jeff, were both racing drivers, the former winning the CART title in 1991 and previously owning Andretti Global. Andretti is set to serve on the board of directors of Cadillac in Formula One from its debut season onwards. Andretti was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2000.
Early life
Childhood in Italy
Mario Gabriele Andretti was born on February 28, 1940, to an Istrian-Italian family in Montona, Istria, Kingdom of Italy. He was born six hours before his twin brother Aldo. He is the son of Alvise "Gigi" Andretti, who worked as a farm administrator in Italy and for Bethlehem Steel in the U.S., and his wife Rina. He also had an older sister, Anna Maria Andretti Burley.Andretti's family owned a farm in Montona, but after World War II, the Treaty of Paris transferred the territory to communist-controlled Yugoslavia. As a result, the Andretti family joined the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus in 1948. The family lost all their land and was permitted to take only one truckload of possessions. They spent seven years in a refugee camp in Lucca, living in an abandoned college dormitory without running water.
The Andretti twins were interested in racing at an early age. At age five, they raced hand-crafted wooden cars through the Montona streets. After moving to Lucca, the brothers got a job parking cars at a local garage. In his autobiography, Andretti wrote, "The first time I fired up a car, felt the engine shudder and the wheel come to life in my hands, I was hooked. It was a feeling I can't describe. I still get it every time I get into a race car."
The garage owners noticed the brothers' passion for racing and brought them to watch the 1954 Mille Miglia, which was won by two-time Formula One champion Alberto Ascari. Ascari became Andretti's personal idol. The twins also visited Monza for the Italian Grand Prix, where Andretti saw Ascari race against Juan Manuel Fangio. Although the twins did not have a grandstand seat, Andretti recalled "being just mesmerized, overwhelmed by the sound, by the speed."
Move to the United States
Following a three-year wait for U.S. visas, the Andretti family moved to the United States in 1955. After an eleven-day journey on the SS Conte Biancamano, they sailed into New York Harbor on Anna Maria's birthday of June 16. With just $125 in cash, they settled in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, where Alvise Andretti's brother-in-law Tony lived. Although Alvise planned to leave after five years, the family never left the United States.Andretti opposed leaving Italy at the time. His father felt that moving to America would give his children the best opportunity to succeed in life, but did not want his sons to become motor racers, as the sport was extremely dangerous at the time. Andretti planned to become a welder, but racing was "the only passion really had career wise," and he admitted that he might not have been able to become a racer if he had stayed in Italy. Andretti's father did not watch him race until Andretti reached IndyCar in 1964.
In his 1970 biography, Andretti said that he became a naturalized U.S. citizen on April 15, 1964. Andretti later revealed that he actually obtained U.S. citizenship on April 7, 1965.
Early racing career
Debut in dirt track racing
The first car Andretti regularly drove was his father's 1957 Chevrolet, which the twins did not race, but nonetheless upgraded with features like a glasspack muffler and fuel injection. The twins were surprised to find that Nazareth hosted a half-mile dirt track, Nazareth Speedway. They used money they made working at their uncle's Sunoco station to refurbish a 1948 Hudson, using a stolen beer barrel as a fuel tank. The car was ready to race when the twins were 19 years old, but the minimum age to race was 21, so the brothers convinced a newspaper editor to falsify their drivers' licenses. After Aldo got into a major accident, the local chief of police spotted the forgery but turned a blind eye to save Aldo's health insurance.The twins did not tell their father that they were racing until Aldo fractured his skull in a race and spent 62 days in a coma. Andretti's father nearly disowned Mario when the latter insisted on racing again, but eventually relented. Aldo also resumed racing, but suffered a career-ending accident in 1969.
The twins got off to a good start, picking up two wins each in sportsman racing after their first four races. In their first two weeks of racing, they won $300; they had previously been making $45 a week at the gas station. From 1960 to 1961, Mario won 21 out of 46 modified stock car races. The twins raced against each other only once, at Oswego Speedway in 1967; Mario won, with Aldo finishing tenth after a brake failure.
To intimidate their opponents, the twins bought Italian racing suits and fabricated a story about racing in junior formulae back in Italy. Andretti maintained the fiction for many years. In 2016, he admitted that the story was fabricated. He recalled that it "psych out, big time."
Single-seater racing
Despite his early successes in modified stock cars, Andretti's goal was to race in single-seater open-wheel cars. He started by racing midget cars in the American Racing Drivers Club series from 1961 to 1963, starting with 3/4 midgets before graduating to full-sized midgets. In March 1962, he won a midget race, which he dubbed "my first victory of any consequence." He raced in over one hundred events in 1963, and scored 29 top-five finishes in 46 ARDC races. He finished third in the 1963 ARDC season standings. On Labor Day in 1963, Andretti won three feature races at two different tracks, an afternoon race at Flemington and a doubleheader at Hatfield, after which reporter Chris Economaki told him that "you just bought the ticket to the big time."From midget cars, the next step on the East Coast racing ladder was sprint car racing, first with the United Racing Club series and then with the United States Auto Club series. Andretti attempted to secure a full-time URC ride, but received only spot starts. However, USAC team owner Rufus Gray gave him a full-time drive for 1964. He won one race at Salem and finished third in the season standings behind veterans Don Branson and Jud Larson. To cover his expenses, he worked as a foreman at a golf cart factory.
Andretti continued to race in sprint cars after progressing to IndyCar. In 1965 he won once at Ascot Park, and finished tenth in the season standings. In 1966 he won five times, but finished second in the standings, behind Roger McCluskey. In 1967 he won two of the three events that he entered.