{"id":17624,"date":"2010-12-16T11:02:56","date_gmt":"2010-12-16T11:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.influx.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=17624"},"modified":"2024-04-11T09:19:45","modified_gmt":"2024-04-11T08:19:45","slug":"super-mario","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adrianflux.co.uk\/influx\/features\/super-mario\/","title":{"rendered":"Super Mario!"},"content":{"rendered":"

If ever there was a 24 carat hall of famer, it\u2019s Mario Andretti. Pulled over in the UK, it\u2019s, \u201cwho do you think you are, Stirling Moss?\u201d But for the Smokies in the USA, it\u2019s always Mario.<\/p>\n

On the US scene, NASCAR<\/a> is King, more so now than ever. Thundering stock cars on ovals with constant contact, drafting, passing and re-passing, is what American audiences seem to want. In days gone by, Indycar racing was almost as strong and the Indy 500<\/a> drew crowds of 400,000. Road racing never caught on to the same extent. Whatever it was didn\u2019t matter to Mario. If it had wheels, he\u2019d race it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

Andretti is renowned as the most versatile driver there has ever been. He arrived in the USA in the fifties, the teenage son of Italian immigrant parents with two hundred and fifty bucks to their name. Inspired by watching Alberto Ascari<\/a> in the Mille Miglia, he soon discovered a dirt oval close to home in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and started racing.<\/p>\n

He had Ferrari in his blood. \u201cWhile I was driving my jalopy stock cars I was thinking about Ferrari,\u201d he says. And even in \u201963 when, as a 23-year-old, he won three sprint car feature races on the same day, he was thinking about Dan Gurney<\/a> in F1.<\/p>\n

Mario met Lotus boss Colin Chapman<\/a> at Indianapolis, mentioned F1 and when he was given a Lotus 49 for the \u201968 US GP at Watkins Glen, he put it on pole. In his first Grand Prix for Ferrari, in 1971, he won the South African GP.<\/p>\n

A racer with a name like Mario had but one destiny<\/em>
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Andretti won in F1, Indycars, the World Sportscar Championship and NASCAR. He took four Indycar titles and won the F1 world championship in 1978 in Chapman\u2019s fabulous ground effect Lotus 79<\/a>. He claimed the Indy 500 in 1969.<\/p>\n

Amazingly, when Andretti scored his last Indycar win in 1993, it meant that he had won Indy races in four different decades, finishing up with 52 wins and 66 pole positions from 407 starts!<\/p>\n

But it was Andretti\u2019s personality, aura and eminent quotability that made him such a star. As the last American to win a grand prix, at Zandvoort in \u201978, it was a year earlier, after a collision trying to overtake reigning champion James Hunt, that Mario memorably vented his feelings.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe says you don\u2019t overtake on the outside in F1? Well I got news for him. If he blocks me on the inside, I\u2019m gonna try the outside. James Hunt is champion of the world, right? Problem is, he thinks he\u2019s King of the goddam world as well… What\u2019s he want me to do \u2013 pick my nose and follow the King?\u201d No F1 corporate speak back then…<\/p>\n

After three difficult F1 seasons with Lotus and Alfa Romeo following his championship success, Andretti returned to the USA to run a full Indycar programme in 1982. But when Ferrari drivers Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi suffered fatal\/career-ending accidents respectively that same year, Andretti got the call to race for Old Man Ferrari<\/a> once again, at Monza.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t turn it down, do you?\u201d he said and, at the age of 42, put the car on pole and finished third. He still speaks with awe of the power of those turbos with qualifying boost \u2013 well over 1000bhp. \u201cLike sitting on top of dynamite,\u201d he remembers. \u201cMan, I had wheelspin in fifth between the Lesmos…\u201d<\/p>\n

Once a racer, always a racer. But has there been a racer like Mario?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tony Dodgins on the Italian- American racer who bridged the Atlantic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1779,6],"tags":[236,82,59,183],"class_list":["post-17624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cars","category-features","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-lotus","tag-motorsport"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSuper Mario! - Influx<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Tony Dodgins on the Italian- American racer who bridged the Atlantic...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.adrianflux.co.uk\/influx\/features\/super-mario\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Super Mario! 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