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Written by:
Rich Conklin
Racer Magazine http://www.racer.com
Racer Magazine http://www.racer.com
02/08/2007 - 07:00 PM
Los Angeles, Calif.
Mario Andretti (LAT photo) ยป More Photos
Mario Andretti never won the Baja 1000. But that's only because he never tried.
I was down there in 2003, when Baja 1000 organizer Sal Fish invited Andretti to be the honorary Grand Marshall for the race. You could see how hard it was for Mario Andretti to just sit there and be a spectator, however honored. He wanted to compete. More than that, he wanted to win.
The guy'd won everywhere else, in every kind of race car.
Mario Andretti was born to race, and born to win.
He won the very first race he entered, in Nazareth, Pa., at the wheel of a 1948 Hudson Hornet Sportsman Stock Car.
He won in quarter midgets and midgets at tracks like Teaneck, Wall Stadium, Hatfield, Hempstead, Pinebrook, Lime Rock, Flemington, Bloomsburg, Salem, Cumberland, Oswego, Rossburg, Manzanita and Marne, just down the road from where I lived in West Michigan.
He won at L.A.'s legendary Ascot in 1965, driving a sprint car.
He won 52 times in a Champ/Indy car, starting with the Hoosier Grand Prix in 1965 and ending with the Phoenix 200 28 years later. In between he won everywhere: Milwaukee, Langhorne, Atlanta, Trenton, St. Jovite, DuQuoin, Hanford,, Pike's Peak Hill Climb, Springfield, Kent, Riverside, Castle Rock, Michigan, Elkhart Lake, the streets of Long Beach, the parking lots of Caesars Palace and The Meadowlands, Portland, Pocono and Cleveland.
Oh yeah, and Indianapolis. But just once, in 1969.
He won the pole in his very first Formula 1 race, the 1968 U.S. Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. The first of his 12 Formula 1 wins came in South Africa in 1971. Ultimately, he won F1 races on four continents, taking the top step on the podium in Japan, Long Beach, Spain, France, Italy, Argentina, Belgium, Germany and Holland. He performance in a Lotus in 1978 won him the World Championship.
He won seven Formula 5000 events in 1974 and 1975. While he was at it, he found time to win the 1974 USAC National Dirt Track Championship title.
In sports cars, he won all the big ones except Le Mans. He spent 1970 filling his trophy case with the spoils of victory in the 6 Hours of Daytona, the 12 Hours of Sebring, the BAOC 1000 km at Brands Hatch and the Watkins Glen 6 Hours.
Victory in the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1967 was just one part of a dominating year of motorsports for Andretti (LAT photo) ยป More Photos
It's surprising he never did the Baja, really. The race's first real year, 1967, Mario Andretti dominated motor racing.
He won the Daytona 500 in 1967. He won the 12 Hours of Sebring a month later. Over the summer, his won USAC's Trenton
Maybe by the time November came around, and Parnelli Jones was headed south of the border for the Baja 1000, Mario Andretti simply needed a weekend off. Can you blame the guy?
When I saw Mario in Baja, a bystander, he looked as if he blamed himself. "Parnelli always tried to get me to come down here," Andretti said at the time. "Now I understand why."
Look at what he did during the 1967 racing season, and you'll never see another year like it.
A handful of drivers are now trying to enjoy the kind of variety Andretti did, crossing over from their core sport to other motorsport. Robby Gordon has come closest to the spirit of Andretti, if falling well short in terms of results. And for the past few years, there's been a pack of NASCAR and open-wheel regulars jumping into Daytona Prototypes for the Rolex 24 at Daytona. The most serious cross-training at this point is probably Dario Franchitti, who'll do both the IRL and ALMS seasons this year for Andretti Green Racing.
But I doubt we'll ever see a driver put together a racing schedule like Mario's in 1967. He was seemingly everywhere. Except Baja.
It's fitting that SPEED has chosen to call its new SPEED Performer of the Year Award, "the Mario Andretti Trophy." His performance in that one year, 1967, is the gold standard. Come even close to what Andretti did in 1967, and you've had a very good year.
The six finalists for the inaugural SPEED Performer of the Year are Fernando Alonso (Formula One), Jimmy Johnson (NASCAR), Nicky Hayden (MotoGP), Sebastien Bourdais (Champ Car), Sam Hornish Jr. (IRL) and Tony Schumacher (NHRA).
"What I would like to see as a characteristic of the (SPEED) Performer of the Year," says Mario, "is a driver that showed courage passion you know, total dedication to what he or she is doing and performance. We're not talking about luck, because luck is something that you cannot control. But a driver that has shown his or her winning ways and whether a championship was part of that doesn't matter it's just ultimate performance."
If you missed the the SPEED Performance Awards, the show re-airs Saturday, as well as on Monday and Friday next week on SPEED (click here for air times).
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