Mario Andretti won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in 1978 with Team Lotus and the Lotus 79, a ground-effect car he helped develop from its earliest design stages. He won 12 Grands Prix and recorded 18 pole positions across a Formula One career spanning 1968 to 1982. He also won four IndyCar National Championship titles (1965, 1966, 1969, 1984), the Indianapolis 500 in 1969, and the Daytona 500 in 1967 — making him one of only two drivers, along with A. J. Foyt, to have won both races. His 52 IndyCar victories and 65 pole positions stand as career records alongside 141 podiums. He also won the 12 Hours of Sebring three times (1967, 1970, 1972). His final IndyCar victory at Phoenix in 1993, aged 53, made him the oldest winner in series history and the first driver to win a race in four different decades.
Born to an Istrian-Italian family on a 2,100-acre farm, Mario and his twin Aldo lost everything when post-war treaties transferred their homeland to Yugoslavia. The family spent seven years in a refugee camp in Lucca before immigrating to Nazareth, Pennsylvania. The brothers discovered a dirt track there, secretly refurbished a 1948 Hudson, and began racing, each winning twice in their first four outings. Mario won 21 of 46 modified stock car races in 1960–1961 before graduating to single-seaters.
Andretti made his Formula One debut at the 1968 Italian Grand Prix with Team Lotus and took pole at his effective first race, the United States Grand Prix, before retiring with a clutch failure. He raced for Ferrari in 1971–1972 and for the Parnelli team in 1975–1976 before rejoining Lotus full-time. The Lotus 79's ground-effect design — which Andretti helped refine, insisting on enlarged sidepods and working closely on suspension settings — proved dominant. He clinched the 1978 championship at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, but did not celebrate: teammate Ronnie Peterson died that night following injuries from a first-lap crash.
Aldo Andretti (1940–2020), Mario's twin, raced until a career-ending accident in 1969. Mario's son Michael Andretti (born 1962) won the CART IndyCar title in 1991 and later owned Andretti Global, a racing team spanning multiple series. Jeff Andretti (born 1964) also competed in IndyCar. John Andretti (1963–2020), son of Aldo, raced in both NASCAR and IndyCar. Marco Andretti (born 1987), son of Michael, competed in IndyCar. The term "Andretti curse" — a folk description of a pattern of near-misses and ill fortune — entered motorsport parlance, one origin story attributing it to a disagreement following the break-up of Mario's team with mechanic Clint Brawner in 1969.
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