Friday, April 16, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

JEFF WOLF: Super Mario, 64, not hitting brakes

Racing legend Mario Andretti watches fighter jets from nearby Nellis Air Force Base fly overhead during his visit to Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Wednesday. Photo by Cariño Casas.

Motorsports will never see another Mario Andretti, the greatest race-car driver ever.

Indy cars, Formula One cars, stock cars. He won in everything he drove.

Had he chosen to make a living with a hammer, Andretti would have driven nails better than any carpenter.

He won NASCAR's Daytona 500 in 1969 and later that year won the Indy 500. He won the Formula One season championship in 1978. Adding to the list are championships on dirt tracks and in sports cars.

It seems an insult to limit his career highlights to one paragraph, but most verbiage needs to be devoted to his success in Indy car racing.

The series, now called Champ Car World Series, was in its heyday as CART and before that when he ran under U.S. Auto Club direction. While driving Indy cars, Andretti won 52 races and four season championships (1965, 1966, 1969 and 1984). He still has records for most poles (67), laps led (7,587) and most starts.

The guy was great, and remains an icon as nice as your favorite uncle.

And of all his accomplishments, those in Indy cars remain his favorites.

"CART was always the most demanding, mainly because of the skills required to go for a championship," said Andretti, a fit 64. "You had to be able to drive on superspeedways, short ovals, street courses, regular road courses. You had the biggest mix of disciplines."

The only time his warm smile chills is when talk turns to the diminished popularity of Indy car racing. CART was on a downward slide even before the Indy Racing League was formed, further splitting what once was America's most popular form of racing.

"What needs to be understood is the bigger picture," he said of egos controlling the two Indy car series.

Like many, including fans, he insists Indy-car racing can only succeed if the organizations merge into one, powerful series.

"The big picture is that open-wheel racing is a discipline of its own," he said. "When CART was (its) most popular, it had a good balance between road courses and ovals. No other discipline had that. They need to get back to that.

"I'd love to be able to broker that. They know I'm available."

Andretti also is smart enough not to waste a minute of his life waiting for the call.

Instead, he still prefers driving race cars and would like a chance at winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans, one of the few titles to elude him. He even got to drive an Indy car during practice for last year's Indy 500. That practice run was aborted when the car became airborne at about 222 mph and flipped a couple of times in midair.

"I was looking up at those F-16s (over Nellis Air Force Base) and thinking that's how my takeoff felt," Andretti said this week at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where he announced a partnership with Bob Lutz for the Las Vegas-based Mario Andretti Racing School.

Instead of a return to competition at Indy, Andretti now can hop in an Indy-style car anytime he wants to "scratch his itch" to drive a race car.

Lutz, creator of the Richard Petty Driving Experience, also based in Las Vegas, began a similar driver experience for Indy cars in 1998, a year after selling his interest in the Petty Experience.

Lutz's open-wheel venture started as CART 101, then changed its name to Driving 101. Andretti's involvement is more than offering his name.

"I want to give other people the experience (of Indy cars). I've had my experiences," he said.

No driver will match or come close to what Andretti did on the track. He agrees, with some modesty, but not because current drivers lack talent.

"(Racing) is so much more commercialized today," he said. "The driver contracts are bigger, and the investment the teams have in the driver, plus all the sponsors involved, easily creates a conflict of interest.

"In my day it was coming to that. I had a lot of painful arguments with my (team) owners. I'd say, `I don't think you could pay enough to own me.'

"I was a little bit arrogant about that."

Jeff Wolf's motorsports column is published Friday. He can be reached at 383-0247 or jwolf@reviewjournal.com.