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Mario Gabriele Andretti (born February 28, 1940) is an American former racing driver and businessman, who competed in Formula One from 1968 to 1982. Andretti won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in 1978 with Lotus. 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 the Kingdom of Italy, Andretti's family emigrated to the United States when he was 15. Andretti won the Formula One World Championship in 1978, four IndyCar titles, including three under USAC sanctioning, and one in CART. He is the only driver to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969), Daytona 500 (1967) and the Formula One World Championship, and, along with Juan Pablo Montoya, the only driver to have won a race in the NASCAR Cup Series, Formula One, and an Indianapolis 500. As of 2023, Andretti's victory at the 1978 Dutch Grand Prix is the most recent Formula One win by an American driver. Andretti had 109 career wins on major circuits. Andretti is one of only three drivers to have won races in Formula One, IndyCar, the World Sportscar Championship, and NASCAR. He has also won races in midget car racing and sprint car racing.
Andretti is the only person to be named United States Driver of the Year in three decades (1967, 1978, and 1984).[6] He was also one of only three drivers to have won major races on road courses, paved ovals, and dirt tracks in one season, a feat that he accomplished four times. With his final IndyCar win in April 1993, Andretti became the first driver to have won IndyCar races in four different decades and the first to win automobile races of any kind in five.
In American popular culture, Andretti's name has become synonymous with speed, similar to Barney Oldfield in the early 20th century, as well as Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton in Europe.
Early life
Andretti and his twin brother Aldo were born to Alvise Andretti, a farm administrator, and his wife, Rina, in Montona, Istria, Kingdom of Italy (present-day Motovun, Croatia). Istria was then part of the Kingdom of Italy, but it became part of Yugoslavia at the end of World War II as product of the Treaty of Paris in 1947 and later the Treaty of Osimo in 1975. In 1948, the Andretti family, like many other Istrian Italians at the time, left during the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus. They initially ended up in a refugee camp in Lucca, Italy.
Racing career
Childhood involvement in motorsports
The twins' mother Rina said that when they were two years old, they would take pot lids out of the cupboards and run around the kitchen, going "Vroom, vroom," like they were driving cars before the twins had even yet seen a car. In 1945, at age five, he and Aldo were racing their hand-crafted wooden cars through the steep streets of their hometown. The brothers were later hired by a garage to park cars. In his autobiography, What's It Like Out There, published in 1970, Andretti described the experience, writing, "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."
Andretti's first racing experience was in a new youth racing league called Formula Junior in Ancona, Italy, when he was thirteen years old. Years later, in an interview during an RRDC Evening with Mario Andretti, Andretti implied that he and his brother made up the story of racing in the Formula Junior league when they moved to Pennsylvania to improve their chances of competing in dirt track racing because, having purchased racing suits in Italy, they looked the part.
1984
Stock car racing
Move to the U.S. and start in racing
Andretti's father had maintained contact with his brother-in-law who had lived in the U.S. for many years. It took the family three years to obtain a U.S. visa. Alvise Andretti initially told the family they would move to the U.S. for five years and then return to Italy. In 1955, the Andretti family emigrated to the U.S., settling in Nazareth in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania with just $125 to their name.
USAC stock car
Andretti became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1964. He competed in United States Auto Club (USAC) stock car events in 1965, and finished twelfth in the season points.[9] He won a USAC Stock Car race in 1967, and finished seventh in the season points He won three 1974 USAC stock car races on road courses, and won four road course races in 1975.
NASCAR
Andretti competed in fourteen NASCAR Grand National/Winston Cup (now NASCAR Cup Series) events in his career. He competed in Holman Moody cars for his final ten events. Holman Moody was one of NASCAR's most successful teams at that time, as the team won NASCAR championships in 1968 and 1969 with driver David Pearson. Andretti won the 1967 Daytona 500 for Holman Moody.
IndyCar career (1964–1974)
From 1956 to 1979, the top open-wheel racing series in North America was the USAC National Championship. It was often referred to as IndyCar racing, referring to the famous Indianapolis 500 race which was the centerpiece of the championship. The races were run on a mixture of paved and dirt ovals, and in later years also included some road courses.
Andretti made his IndyCar debut on April 19, 1964, at the New Jersey State fairgrounds in Trenton, New Jersey. He started sixteenth and finished eleventh. Andretti was introduced by his USAC sprint car owner, Rufus Gray, to veteran mechanic Clint Brawner. Brawner was not impressed since sprint car drivers Stan Bowman and Donnie Davis had recently died, and Brawner's current driver, Chuck Hulse, had been critically injured. Chris Economaki recommended Andretti to Brawner, so Brawner watched Andretti race at Terre Haute, Indiana. Brawner was convinced that he had found the new driver for his team. The two stayed together for six years. Andretti finished eleventh in the USAC National Championship that season. Andretti won his first championship car race at the Hoosier Grand Prix on a road course at Indianapolis Raceway Park in 1965. His third-place finish at the 1965 Indianapolis 500 in the Brawner Hawk (a mechanical copy of the then-current Brabham Formula 1 design) earned him the race's Rookie of the Year award, and contributed towards Andretti winning the series championship. He was the youngest national champion in series history at age 25. He repeated as series champion in 1966, winning eight of fifteen events. He led every lap of the 1966 Langhorne 100. He also won the pole at the 1966 Indianapolis 500. Andretti finished second in IndyCar in 1967 and 1968. He also won a single non-championship drag race in 1967 in a Ford Mustang. In both 1967 and 1968, Andretti lost the season USAC championship to A. J. Foyt and Bobby Unser, respectively, in the waning laps of the last race of the season at Riverside, California—each by the smallest points margin in history.
Andretti won nine races in 1969, the 1969 Indianapolis 500, and the season championship. He also won the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, which was part of the USAC National Championship. He was named ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year. Between 1966 and 1969 he won 29 of 85 USAC championship races.
Indianapolis 500
Andretti won once at the Indianapolis 500 in 29 attempts. Andretti has had so many incidents and near victories at the track that critics have dubbed the family's performance after Mario's 1969 Indianapolis 500 victory the "Andretti Curse".
Elder of Andretti racing family, f
urther information: John Andretti, Marco Andretti, and Michael AndrettiBoth of Mario Andretti's sons, Michael and Jeff, were auto racers. Michael followed in his father's footsteps by winning the IndyCar title, with Mario's nephew John Andretti joining the series in 1988. This meant that the Andrettis became the first family to have four relatives compete in the same series. With Mario sharing driving duties with sons Michael and Jeff at the 1991 Rolex 24 at Daytona, driving a Porsche 962, the Andretti clan finished 5th.
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Later life
Andretti lives near his grandson Marco in Bushkill Township, Pennsylvania. His late wife Dee Ann (née Hoch) was a native of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, who taught Andretti English in 1961. They were married on November 25, 1961.She died on July 2, 2018, following a heart attack.
If you want to read a lot more, go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Andretti
- SERVES
- 4
- COOK TIME
- 30 Min
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