Celebrare, Mario: A year to remember

My autographed copy of the 1969 program.

How well I remember the “Arrivederci, Mario!” Tour of 1994.

Everywhere Mario Andretti went that year, people showered him with accolades one last time. It didn’t matter whether he won on the track or not – at least, not to anyone except Mario himself. For everyone else, it was a matter of giving a good friend a deserved sendoff.

But somehow, I can’t think those 12 months could have compared to what should be tabbed the “Celebrare, Mario!” month the world’s most recognized race car driver is experiencing right now at the Indianapolis 500.

He is being blown away by it, and he doesn’t mind admitting it.

CELEBRATE!           

Twenty-five years after he stepped out of the cockpit as a full-time speed merchant, no one is saying “goodbye … see you later … bye-bye” to the Italian immigrant who has put Nazareth, PA, solidly on the map. People everywhere are opening their arms and embracing him, maybe like no other time in his life.

Some health issues will prevent me from attending the 103^rd Indianapolis 500 next weekend to watch the final chapter of this special time for Andretti as he is hailed for not only his only Indy victory 50 years ago, but also as the principal ambassador of his life-long pursuit.

But I have to say it’s been enjoyable for me to step into that time capsule and take myself back to my early years in the newspaper business. To re-read old stories and stir up old memories. But most of all, to talk to Mario again about those days and maybe to learn some things I never knew or even thought about.

My story that appears in The Morning Call. But we talked about so much more, so I thought I’d share some of the conversation with you.

FIRST, THE BACK STORY

Two younger guys at Pocono, 1971.

Mario won 17 races between 1964 and 1967 in a car owned by Al Dean. Dean also owned the car in which another Lehigh Valley racing legend, the late Eddie Sachs, sat on the pole twice and finished second in 1961 classic at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Andretti won back-to-back national championships and finished second the third year he drove for Dean, so when Dean died in 1967. Andretti, perhaps fearful of losing all the momentum he had built up in three years, took a step he didn’t really want to take. He became a car owner.

“At that point, we didn’t have another plan, and things were going so well for all of us and I wanted to keep everything together,” he said. “So, I took over the responsibility, even though that was never my objective. I didn’t really want the business side of it – worrying about the sponsors, about the budgets and all that. But I did it.”  

Mario won four races in 1968, but he laid an egg at the Indianapolis 500 and finished dead last. He ran second in 11 races on the United States Auto Club circuit and finished second in the standings to Bobby Unser – by just 11 points.

Enter Andy Granatelli. His two-year turbine experiment at Indianapolis had been unsuccessful, and to add insult to injury, USAC put restrictions on the “whooshmobile” that left the turbines uncompetitive and sent Granatelli in a different direction.

But during that 1968 season, two things happened that changed everything.

“I always had a great open relationship with Andy, and in ’68, when I did Formula One, I sealed the deal for new Lotus cars for [the USAC series in] 1969,” Andretti said. “It was a deal for myself with Colin Chapman.

“Andy made a separate deal with Colin where STP was going to sponsor Colin’s cars. So, all of a sudden, I’m talking to Andy. I don’t know if I said it [first] or if he said it. I asked him, ‘Do you want to buy my team?’ He says, ‘Yeah, I’ll buy the team.’ It was perfect. He bought the team and Colin honored the deal. In ’69, Andy owned the team. It was happy days for me. That’s what I wanted.”

A BUSY 1969 SCHEDULE

Racing in the 1960s required more than a lead foot. Versatility was a major requirement for success.

No one proved to be more versatile than Mario. That helped him win USAC titles in 1965 and 1966 and finish second in both ‘67 and ’68 – even after spotting A.J. Foyt and Bobby Unser 1,000 points each in those last two seasons. Foyt and Unser were Indy winners in 1967 and 1968; Andretti scored no series points at the speedway.

“I did 37 races that year,” Mario said of 1969. “My season started February 1 at the Motor Trend 500 NASCAR race at Riverside [Calif.] and my last race was Dec. 31 at Sebring in a Formula 5000 car.

“I drove in seven different categories with 10 different cars. Here’s a quickie. My first race was Riverside with the stock car; my second was South Africa in Formula One; the third was a midget race at the Houston Astrodome; the fourth race was the 12 Hours of Sebring in a sports car and the fifth was at Phoenix in an Indy car. I also won Pike’s Peak Hillclimb in ’69.

“I sealed the USAC championship by August. I easily could have had five straight national championships. We really had something going; it was just amazing. [Jim] McGee and Clint [Brawner] were a perfect duo for me. Clint had the wisdom and experience; McGee had his modern thinking. Clint kept us in check.”

INDY 500 PREPARATIONS

The Lotus was fast. Andretti was the first driver to top the 170 mph mark in practice. Then, for the first time in the modern history of the 500, the entire first weekend of qualifying was rained out.

The weekend produced the story of Jigger Sirois, who was the first qualifier but waved off his run after three laps. Rain a short time later closed the track. Had Sirois not waved off, he would have been the provisional pole sitter for at least a week, even though his speed was about 10 mph slower than the fast cars.

During the week of practice between qualifying weekends, Andretti was running fast again when suddenly a broken hub threw his car into a spin and a vicious crash. Mario managed to get out in a hurry but suffered some bad facial burns.

“The biggest fear of mine was that this was not the first incident for the Lotus,” Andretti said. “Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt on the other side [Europe] had issues, but the crashes were minor. When I destroyed the car and almost killed myself, it was obvious that vital components were breaking.”

Mario said Granatelli had entered a fourth car at Indy – a Brawner Hawk Mario drove to win an early-season event in California. The Hawk was not intended to run, though; Granatelli entered it only to get another garage in Gasoline Alley for the month.

“The Hawk was legal, but when I crashed the Lotus on Wednesday, we were left with only two practice days and I didn’t feel near as good about our chances,” Andretti said. “We all knew the team had to go on. We were not going to let Andy down, or STP, because of the importance of it.”

Mario said Granatelli wasn’t consulted about the decision to pass up the backup Lotus in favor of the Hawk, which was a new car at the beginning of the season. “We had control of the team,” Mario said, referring to himself, Brawner and McGee.

Despite a lack of practice, Mario qualified the Hawk for the middle of the first row, but the team ran into trouble with race officials when it sought to add a radiator to deal with an overheating problem with the Hawk. “We didn’t put the outside cooler on the car for qualifying because it caused too much drag,” Mario said. The rules said you ran the car the way you qualified it.

The team threatened to withdraw, but never followed through. In fact, a talented fabricator-mechanic on the crew managed to fit the radiator behind the head of the driver. “Without it, there was no way we would have finished,” Mario said recently.  “It was a monumental job to make that happen.” 

THE RACE

Mario went into the race with a car that was fast enough to win. Would it hold up? Even Andretti was unsure what the rigorous 500-mile test would demand.

The Hawk led 116 laps that day. There were challenges by A.J. Foyt and Lloyd Ruby. Foyt led 66 laps in the earlier stages of the event, but a long pit stop to repair a manifold ruined his day as he finished 19 laps behind; and later, Ruby had a fuel tank problem and dropped out just after half way.

“The racing was pretty tight with Ruby; he was out for bear,” Mario said. “I had to measure myself. He led and I had to go after him and make sure that I could pass him. He was making it tough, but I passed him and once I was in the lead, I knew I could pass him, so I let him go by and I was following him to rest the engine a little bit. We had some tight situations, but it was good racing.”

Asked if he had any particularly scary moments during the race, Mario said, “There were two instances. One car, [Gordon] Johncock, I think, blew an engine and I slid really wide in Turn 3; and then later, I was lapping a car in Turn 2 and I lost a little bit of concentration and I got up in the grey [and out of the racing groove] pretty bad. I figured, ‘Holy s---, buckle down, man.”

Mario wound up winning by more than a lap and admitted that “I could have lapped them again, but I didn’t need to.” It was beautiful to watch.

WHY JUST ONE INDY WIN?

I asked Mario, “When you finally won that 1969 race, you probably figured you’d be able to win five or six more in your career, right?”

“I look at Dale Earnhardt,” Mario said. “He was winning everything, but he couldn’t pull off the Daytona 500 until near the end of his career. How do you explain that stuff?

“I don’t feel sad. I’ve been there. I was competitive. I could have won others. I was close. There was one I did win by the rulebook and it was taken away from me. They disregarded the rules.”

That race, of course, was the 1981 Indy 500. Bobby Unser crossed the finish line first, but the result was protested and it was ruled that Unser had passed as many as eight or nine cars under yellow. The result was overturned, and when the official order of finish was posted the next day, Andretti was the winner.

But, wait. Car owner Roger Penske wasn’t going for that. And almost six months later, a three-person appeals panel changed the Unser penalty from one lap to a $40,000 fine and took the race way from Mario. “I could have accepted just about anything else,” Mario told Ted Meixell. “But not this. It’s ludicrous. I’ll never be able to swallow this. Never, never, never could I have dreamed of this coming down.”

That series of circumstances just a year after I left USAC to become sports editor at The Morning Call. I would have had a tough time defending the slap in the face chief steward Tom Binford, who became a good friend of mine, received from a panel that knew better but didn’t defend him. I was irate.

In putting this together, I came across a bumper sticker that was circulated after the horrendous decision. I thought I had lost it. Here's a photo of it.

Back to the question about why he had so much heartache at Indy, Mario said, “I also dominated there. In 1987, nobody was close to me [Mario led 170 of the first 177 laps before falling out]. Look at Michael. Same thing. He dominated but didn’t win Indy. But it is what it is. Michael said he won at Toronto seven times and he doesn’t know why. I won Trenton six times and Long Beach four times and I don’t know why. You put the same effort in every time. Sometimes it's your day, sometimes it's not.”

Mario and Clint Brawner at Nazareth National during Mario Andretti Week, 1969. 

THE NAZARETH CELEBRATION

It was, in a word, terrific.

The two-mile-long parade was huge, and Mario admitted recently that he came across a YouTube video of the event and that he had forgotten what a big deal it was not only for Nazareth but for the entire Lehigh Valley. He rode at the beginning with Dee Ann and sons Michael and Jeff, so he didn’t get to take it all in first-hand.

He said he was particularly surprised to see the Mummer’s string bands – four of them, to be exact – that came from Philadelphia and New Jersey. Maybe that’s because they were delayed in arriving because of a highway accident and they actually marched near the end of the parade.

Just for kicks, here’s a link to one of those parade videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAp2vlJCV38

Local fans couldn't have asked for a more perfect 100-mile USAC championship dirt-car race at Nazareth National Speedway. With his wife in the hospital awaiting the arrival of the couple's third child -- Barbie was born during the night -- Mario broke the USAC record for a 100-mile race on dirt and led all but 10 of the 89 laps on the 1 1/8-mile track 18 years later would be paved and would become a regular stop on the Indy-car circuit until 2004.

Nazareth had no facility large enough for a crowd of about 1,000, so a grand testimonial dinner was moved to the old George Washington Motor Lodge on what is now MacArthur Road. I was proud to cover not only the 500, but also the coronation that was accorded Andretti by the Lehigh Valley community he has always loved unabashedly.

In my story of the testimonial, I wrote that Granatelli said, “I spent $8 million in 23 years at Indianapolis, and let me tell you, it was worth waiting for to win with Mario.

“A race driver, to me, is not just someone who gets in the car and goes. He’s a man who is easy to work with, doesn’t get bigheaded when success comes his way, knows his car inside and out, can talk to the public and has a good head on his shoulders. Mario is all of those things – a true champion.”

Andretti said, “No matter what happens from now on, this is the summit. There are a few simple words which say best what Dee Ann and I feel at this moment. Thank you very much.

“I don’t think I’ll ever really be able to convey my feelings. I appreciate it no end. I keep telling myself I wish you wouldn’t have done all this, but I’m so glad you did. All men work to succeed and to provide for their families, and they all enjoy any attention they can get. But no matter how high you get, there’s always something special that stays with you, your home town. To be honored by the people a man knows best and who know him best is a great feeling.

“I still have a lot of ambitions and goals, but I’ll never think about leaving here. I’ve been lucky and won a few races, and this year we hung in and got the greatest win of all. I don’t know if I deserve all of this, because I’m just one small member of a big team.”

Mario deserved it 50 years ago, and nothing has changed.

So, celebrare, Mario, celebrare!