Mario Andretti: 52 IndyCar Wins, a Record 67 Poles, and One Indy 500
Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing IndyCar Driver Spotlight - where we pull one driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week: the most versatile racing driver America ever produced.
The Short Version
Mario Andretti started 407 Indy car races, won 52 of them, and put a car on pole 67 times, which is still the all-time record. He won four national championships across three different decades, took the 1978 Formula One world title, and won the Daytona 500. He is the only driver in history to win the Indy 500, the Daytona 500 and a Formula One championship. And in 29 tries at Indianapolis, he only won the 500 once.
From a Refugee Camp to Nazareth, Pennsylvania
Andretti was born on February 28, 1940, in Montona, a hill town on the Istrian peninsula that is now Motovun, Croatia. When the war ended and Istria went to Yugoslavia, his family left everything behind. From 1948 to 1955 the Andrettis lived in a refugee camp in Lucca, Italy, where Mario and his twin brother Aldo parked cars at a local garage and learned to drive on the narrow streets in other people's Fiats and Alfa Romeos. In 1954 the shop owners took the boys to Monza for the Italian Grand Prix, and Alberto Ascari's Ferrari settled the question of what they were going to do with their lives.
In June 1955 the family sailed for New York and settled in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. Mario was 15 and spoke almost no English. Within a few years he and Aldo were racing stock cars on local dirt, and by 1965 Mario was the USAC national champion at 25 years old. Aldo's driving career was cut short by injuries, but Mario kept going for another three decades.
The 1969 Indy 500 and the Curse That Followed
Andretti showed up at Indianapolis in 1969 with a radical four-wheel-drive Lotus and immediately went quick. Two days before qualifying he hit the wall in Turn 4, the car caught fire, and he came out of it with burns on his face. His team had a day and a half to prepare the backup, a two-year-old Brawner Hawk that was never supposed to see the front straightaway again. He qualified it on the front row anyway. The burns were bad enough that Aldo, his identical twin, stood in for the official front-row photograph.
On race day Andretti led 116 of the 200 laps and beat Dan Gurney by roughly two laps at an average of 156.867 mph. Car owner Andy Granatelli planted the most famous kiss in American motorsport on his cheek in Victory Lane. It was his fifth attempt at the 500 and it turned out to be the only one he would ever win.
He started the Indy 500 29 times. He sat on the pole in 1966, 1967 and 1987. He finished second twice, including 1981, when he was declared the winner the morning after the race and then lost it again in October when a USAC appeals board reinstated Bobby Unser by a 2-1 vote and fined him $40,000 instead. Fans call it the Andretti Curse, and no member of the family has won the 500 since.
Last weekend, on the 50th anniversary of my 1969 Indy 500 win, I was given my very own BabyBorg trophy. Going home with this, I felt like I won the race again.
- Mario Andretti (@MarioAndretti) May 31, 2019
By the Numbers
Here is the Indy car career laid out in the parts that matter. Every figure below is an Indy car total across his USAC and CART years.
The Second Act Nobody Saw Coming
Most drivers who go to Formula One and win a world championship do not come back to Indy cars and win another title. Andretti did. He took the 1978 F1 crown with Lotus, ran his last grand prix in 1982, then joined Newman/Haas Racing and in 1984, at 44 years old, won six races in a Lola-Cosworth and took his fourth national championship. That is 19 years between his first title and his last.
He kept winning after that too. His 52nd and final Indy car victory came in the Valvoline 200 at Phoenix on April 4, 1993. He led 39 of the 200 laps and beat Raul Boesel by a full lap. He was 53 years, 1 month and 7 days old, which still makes him the oldest race winner in Indy car history and the only driver to win in four separate decades. He retired after the 1994 season.
Off the Track
Andretti married Dee Ann Hoch in November 1961. She had been teaching him English in Nazareth, and they were married a few months after they met. They were together nearly 57 years until she died of a heart attack on July 3, 2018, at 76. Their sons Michael and Jeff both raced Indy cars, Michael winning 42 of them, and grandson Marco carried the name into the 2000s. Mario's nephew John Andretti raced in IndyCar and NASCAR before his death in 2020.
He never really left the sport. Andretti has spent years driving the IndyCar two-seater on race weekends, giving fans a lap at speed, and he sits on the board of the new Cadillac Formula One team, whose first chassis is designated the MAC-26 in his honor. The Associated Press named him Driver of the Century, and RACER magazine named him American Driver of the Century.
The Bottom Line
Mario Andretti won on dirt, on pavement ovals, on road courses, in sports car endurance racing and in Formula One. He has more Indy car poles, more starts and more laps led than anyone who has ever done it, and he is the only human being with an Indy 500 trophy, a Daytona 500 trophy and an F1 world championship on the same shelf. The one that got away is the one he only got once. That is the Indianapolis 500, and it is why fans still talk about the curse.
Shop the Story
Andretti's one win came at the Brickyard, so if you are shopping his story, start there. We carry a run of in-stock IndyCar and Indianapolis 500 gear:
- Checkered Flag Sports 109th Indianapolis 500 Back Home Again Tee
- IndyCar 2025 Checkered Flag Sublimated T-Shirt
- Checkered Flag Sports Indianapolis 500 Snake Pit Tee
- Checkered Flag Sports 109th Indianapolis 500 Car Logo Tee
- 109th Indianapolis 500 Red Graphic Logo Tee
We do not carry Andretti-specific gear right now. If you want something with his name on it, keep an eye on the newest arrivals, since IndyCar stock moves through the store all season.
