Mario Gabriele Andretti

Andretti was born on February 28, 1940, to an Istrian-Italian family in Montona, Istria, Kingdom of Italy (present-day Motovun, Croatia), six hours before his twin brother Aldo. His father, Alvise "Gigi" Andretti, worked as a farm administrator; the family owned a 2,100-acre farm in Montona. Following World War II, the 1947 Treaty of Paris transferred the territory to communist-controlled Yugoslavia. The family joined the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus in 1948, losing all their land and 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.

In Lucca, the Andretti twins got a job parking cars at a local garage. The garage owners brought them to watch the 1954 Mille Miglia, won by Alberto Ascari, who became Andretti's personal idol. The twins also visited Monza for the Italian Grand Prix, where Andretti witnessed Ascari race against Juan Manuel Fangio. The family emigrated to the United States in 1955 following a three-year wait for visas, arriving in New York Harbor on June 16 with just $125 in cash, and settling in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

In Nazareth, the twins discovered a half-mile dirt track, Nazareth Speedway. They used earnings from their uncle's Sunoco station to refurbish a 1948 Hudson, using a stolen beer barrel as a fuel tank, and falsified their driving licenses to bypass the minimum racing age of 21. After Aldo fractured his skull in a race and spent 62 days in a coma, their father nearly disowned Mario, but eventually relented. From 1960 to 1961, Mario won 21 out of 46 modified stock car races.

Andretti progressed to midget cars in the American Racing Drivers Club (ARDC) series from 1961 to 1963, scoring 29 top-five finishes in 46 ARDC races in 1963 and finishing third in that year's standings. From midget cars he moved to sprint car racing with the United States Auto Club (USAC), where 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.

Andretti entered IndyCar during the 1964 season while still racing sprint cars full-time, making his debut on April 19 at the Trenton 100. Midway through 1964 he joined Dean Van Lines Racing Division (DVL) under chief mechanic Clint Brawner, who had previously mentored A. J. Foyt. He was named IndyCar Rookie of the Year.

In 1965, his first full season with DVL, Andretti drove the Brawner Hawk — a derivation of the Brabham Formula One chassis — winning his first IndyCar race at the Hoosier Grand Prix and taking third at the Indianapolis 500, earning that race's Rookie of the Year award. At 25, he became the youngest IndyCar champion in history, a record he held for thirty years until Jacques Villeneuve won the 1995 title.

In 1966, Andretti won eight of fifteen starts and led 54.5% of all laps — a record until Al Unser's 66.8% in 1970, and still the second-highest figure in history as of the 2022 season. In 1967, he lost the championship to Foyt in controversial circumstances at the season-ending Rex Mays 300 at Riverside. He was named Driver of the Year that season.

In 1969, driving for Andy Granatelli's STP Corporation, Andretti won nine races including the Indianapolis 500 and the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, claiming his third USAC title. His 5,025 points were a USAC record; he scored nearly twice as many as runner-up Al Unser. He was named ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year.

After a period with Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing (1972–1975) during which he won the 1974 dirt track championship and made guest Formula One appearances for Ferrari, Parnelli released Andretti from his USAC contract to focus on Formula One.

Andretti debuted in Formula One at the 1968 United States Grand Prix with Lotus, becoming the first Formula One driver to start his debut race from pole position. Jackie Stewart overtook him on the first lap; a broken nose cone forced a pit stop and he eventually retired with a clutch failure, but Motor Sport wrote that he displayed "that same assurance of absolute control [in the corners] one saw in [Jim] Clark's driving."

After sporadic appearances with Lotus and STP-March, Andretti signed with Scuderia Ferrari for 1971. On his Ferrari debut at Kyalami, he achieved his maiden Grand Prix win after race leader Denny Hulme's engine failed with four laps to go. He won again at the 1972 Sebring endurance race, and also took his third Sebring victory that year. Enzo Ferrari offered to make him No. 1 driver for 1972, but Andretti declined.

After part-time roles with Ferrari (1972) and Parnelli (1974), Andretti joined Team Lotus full-time in 1976 under Colin Chapman. The Lotus 77 was uncompetitive initially, but Andretti lapped the field to win the season-ending Japanese Grand Prix.

Andretti's arrival at Lotus coincided with the ground effect revolution. The design team shaped the car to generate downforce through sidepods that channelled air under the floor via the Venturi effect. Andretti, whose STP-March team had experimented with sidepods in 1970, encouraged the team to make them even bigger. When testing at Hockenheim, he noticed the car's downforce increased dramatically near a fence; Chapman subsequently added sideskirts. Engineer Nigel Bennett recalled Andretti requesting seemingly imperceptible adjustments, such as "Lower the front springs by an eighth of a turn."

In 1977, the Lotus 78 was among the fastest cars on the grid. Andretti won four Grands Prix — more than any other driver that year — including the French Grand Prix with a dramatic last-lap pass on John Watson and his first Italian Grand Prix at the third attempt. However, unreliable special engines caused retirements while leading at Spielberg, in second at Silverstone, and battling for third at Zandvoort; he also ran out of fuel at three races (Kyalami, Anderstorp, and Mosport). He finished third in the championship.

Before the 1978 season, Lotus signed Ronnie Peterson as Andretti's teammate at the highest salary in Formula One, with Andretti negotiating number one driver status and a $10,000 per-point bonus. The team stayed with the Lotus 78 for the first five races before unveiling the Lotus 79 at the Belgian Grand Prix, featuring an improved diffuser and a small rear wing that raised top speed.

Andretti dominated the season with six victories and four Lotus 1–2 finishes. He clinched the championship at the Italian Grand Prix with two races remaining, but did not celebrate: Peterson had suffered a major crash at the start and died that night due to complications from leg surgery. Andretti remarked outside the hospital, "Unhappily, motor racing is also this," and said in 2018 that "I could never truly celebrate and I never will. It was an enormous jolt. You never really totally recover from [it]." He became the second World Drivers' Champion from the United States.

After 1978, lead sponsor Imperial Tobacco withdrew funding. The Lotus 80 suffered porpoising and chassis weakness; Andretti's new teammate Carlos Reutemann refused to drive it. The transitional Lotus 81 in 1980 yielded only one championship point all season.

Andretti moved to Alfa Romeo for 1981, choosing it over McLaren on the advice of Marlboro's John Hogan. The ban on sliding sideskirts ahead of the season stripped the Alfa of its ground effect advantage. He scored only 3 points.

In 1982, Andretti made two stand-in appearances: for Williams at the United States Grand Prix West (after Carlos Reutemann abruptly quit) and for Ferrari at the final two races after Didier Pironi was injured. At the Italian Grand Prix, his penultimate race, he took pole and finished third. He retired from Formula One with 12 wins, 18 pole positions, 10 fastest laps, and 19 podiums.

Andretti returned to full-time American open-wheel racing in 1982 with Patrick Racing and Jim McGee — his mechanic from DVL and Parnelli — finishing third in the standings. In 1983 he joined the newly formed Newman/Haas Racing, set up by Carl Haas and actor Paul Newman, which used Lola chassis. He took the team's maiden win at Elkhart Lake.

In 1984, the Lola T800 — designed by Lotus veteran Nigel Bennett using ground effect technology Formula One had just banned — proved formidable. After trailing Tom Sneva by 58 points mid-season, Andretti won five of eight races in a run that included the Michigan 500, where he beat Sneva by 0.14 seconds in what was then the closest finish in IndyCar history. He beat Sneva by 13 points for his fourth IndyCar title at age 44, and was voted Driver of the Year for a third time.

In 1986, Andretti finally won his home race, the Pocono 500, after 14 attempts, calling it "one of the happiest weekends [he had] ever had." In 1987, driving an Adrian Newey-designed chassis with Ilmor engines, he dominated the Indianapolis 500 by leading 170 of the first 177 laps before his engine failed late. In 1989, his son Michael Andretti joined Newman/Haas, creating the first father-son teammate pairing in the series.

Andretti's 1993 win at Phoenix — his last IndyCar victory — made him, at 53 years and 34 days, the oldest winner of an IndyCar event and the first driver to win races in four different decades. Later that year he set a closed-course world record qualifying speed of 234.275 miles per hour (377.029 km/h) at the Michigan 500.

He raced a final season dubbed "The Arrivederci Tour" in 1994, his 407th and final IndyCar race ending at Laguna Seca when his engine failed with four laps to go. He retired with 52 wins (second-most in history at the time, behind only A. J. Foyt's 67), 67 pole positions, and a record 7,595 laps led.

At the height of his IndyCar career, Andretti contested thirty appearances in top-level stock car racing from 1965 to 1969. He drove primarily for Ford works team Holman-Moody in the NASCAR Grand National Series, winning the 1967 Daytona 500 after convincing the team to provide a top-specification engine. He alleged the team attempted to sabotage his race so lead driver Fred Lorenzen could inherit the win; his friend Parnelli Jones backed the accusation. Andretti also won IROC VI and finished second in IROC III and IROC V in the International Race of Champions series.

Andretti won the 12 Hours of Sebring three times: in 1967 with Ford, in 1970 with Ferrari, and in 1972. In 1972, sharing drives with Jacky Ickx, he helped Ferrari win that year's World Championship for Makes, winning the three North American rounds and the Brands Hatch round.

At the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Andretti competed across four decades. In 1966, he shared a Holman-Moody Ford Mk II with Lucien Bianchi before retiring with valve failure. In 1967, a mechanic accidentally installed a front brake pad backwards during a 3:30 am pit stop; his brakes locked at the Dunlop Bridge, he crashed and broke several ribs, and Roger McCluskey pulled him to safety from oncoming traffic. In 1983, he and Michael finished third overall in a customer Porsche. In 1995 with Courage Compétition, he finished second overall and first in the LMP1 class despite a series of organizational setbacks. His final Le Mans appearance, in 2000 at age 60, yielded a 15th-place finish in the Panoz LMP-1 Roadster-S.

Andretti is the only driver to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969), Daytona 500 (1967), and the Formula One World Drivers' Championship (1978), as of 2025. He is one of only two drivers — alongside Dan Gurney — to win races in Formula One, IndyCar, the World Sportscar Championship, and NASCAR.

He was named Driver of the Century by the Associated Press (1999) and RACER magazine (2000), U.S. Driver of the Year in 1967, 1978, and 1984, and inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2000. He is the only driver named U.S. Driver of the Year in three different decades.

Race tracks honour him at the Circuit of the Americas ("The Andretti," the final turn), Laguna Seca (the "Andretti Hairpin," turn 2), and Pocono ("Andretti Road"). In 2006, the Italian government named him a Commendatore of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Cadillac Formula One team from its debut in 2026 onwards. His son Michael Andretti won the CART title in 1991 and previously owned Andretti Global.

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