![]() The crowning glory was perhaps the world title that he claimed with Lotus in 1978, two years after he joined the team, but even before that notable triumph there were so many other episodes worth recounting. His career was one that it's a shame to sum up merely by his achievements, impressive as they are. When he took on Formula 1 stars like Niki Lauda and Jackie Stewart on equal terms, he was an Italo-American who spoke his own brand of slang and was not intimidated by anything or anyone on track. When he won on ovals, he was an American with Italian roots. In those years, Andretti was increasingly a hero that straddled two worlds, both in terms of the races he won and his nationality. There would be more grands prix dressed in red for him in 1972, as well as the four endurance races that he won for the Prancing Horse. It was a dream start: Andretti made his Ferrari debut in South Africa, taking the win as well as the lap record. By the late 1960s he was a regular in F1, and it was Enzo Ferrari himself – impressed by Mario’s performances in a March that certainly wasn’t at the top level – who decided to put him in one of the red cars for 1971. By 1955 the Andretti family had emigrated to the United States, where Mario found fame and fortune by racing and winning in nearly all the categories of American racing out there, including Indycar, not to mention his triumphs at iconic races such as the Indy 500 and Daytona 500.īut as well as the United States – which had given so much to the Andretti family over the years – Mario was looking at Europe, where he had already raced in 1966 with a Ford GT40 at Le Mans. Mario was born in 1940 in Montona, Istria, in what was then Italy (it's now Motovun in Croatia). We’re talking, of course, about the inimitable Mario Andretti.
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