Photo : -

 

Andretti was awarded the honorary title of “driver of the century” by Associated Press and Racer magazine. It has to be said that the sheer length of his career is unusual. In Europe his only feat of arms was to be F1 World Champion in 1978 with Lotus. Strangely, the Italian-born American won most of his trophies in the US. He is the only American to have won the US F1 Grand Prix, at Long Beach in 1977.

Having begun racing in road cars that he souped up with his twin brother Aldo, Andretti’s goal was to race in a single-seater. He therefore turned to the former IndyCar Championships, which he won four times, in 1965, 1966 and 1969 and again in 1984 having given up Formula 1. He won the legendary Indy 500 in 1969 as well as the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in the same year.

Although he preferred single-seaters, Andretti did not turn his back on other disciplines, especially the NASCAR championship. He only took the start in 14 stock-car races but won the most famous of all, the Daytona 500, in 1967.
The insatiable Andretti also took part in endurance racing and notched up three wins in the 12 hours of Sebring, with Ford and Bruce McLaren in 1967, then with Ferrari in 1970 and 1972. His best endurance season was in 1972 with Jacky Ickx. The pair won Sebring, the 6 hours of Daytona and two other rounds of the World Sportscar Championship, leading Ferrari to victory in the World Championship for Makes at the end of the year.

He took part in the world championship, but Andretti did not enter the Le Mans 24 Hours during that period, opting instead to try his luck in F1 on a part-time basis. He came to Le Mans in 1966 and 1967 with the Ford GT40 and recorded the best lap of the so-called race of the century but did not compete regularly in the 24-hour race. When he returned in the eighties in a Porsche, Andretti clinched a third place. He obtained his best result in the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1995 with Courage: second place in the same lap as the winning McLaren.

Andretti had not abandoned hope to be the first, the only, driver to have been F1 World Champion, to have driven down victory lane in Indianapolis and to win the Le Mans 24 Hours. He therefore took his last start at Le Mans in 2000, aged 60, in a Panoz with teammates Jan Magnussen and David Brabham, who went on to win in 2009. Alas, the trio had to be content with fifteenth place. “Super Mario”’s dream was not to be. He remains the first to have almost achieved the feat, a record only equalled by Jacques Villeneuve in 2008.

Since taking retirement, Andretti is in all the halls of fame in the US and remains very much a figure of motorsports. He did the voiceover for the Ford Fairlane in the cartoon film Cars, having won the Daytona 500 in 1967 at the wheel of that very car. He is an ambassador for the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, which he officially opened and on which he drove during a round of the FIA World Endurance Championships.

Cécile Bonardel / ACO Translated by Emma Paulay

PHOTO: LE MANS (SARTHE, FRANCE), CIRCUIT DES 24 HEURES, LE MANS 24 HOURS, SATURDAY 17 & SUNDAY 18 JUNE 1995. Mario Andretti achieved his best result in the Le Mans 24 Hours, second place, in 1995.