This is the story of the one Andretti really won, on a day when he had no reason to think he would win, during a month when so many things went wrong, only to go perfectly right.Īndretti: We went in with the Lotus. And yes, so does Unser.īut that’s another story. “I may have passed more cars than he did (under the caution), but maybe I was trying harder.’’Īndretti, now 79, wears the 1981 Indy 500 ring, which he was initially given after a protest that was ultimately overturned in Unser’s favor. “He (Andretti) passed some cars during a caution, too,” Unser said. Unser is still fighting the fight, even though the pair are fast friends who just can’t seem to agree on this issue.

This is an oral history of Andretti’s one-and-only Indianapolis 500 victory, although you could do an entirely different oral history on the 1981 race, which Bobby Unser won. Andretti was a growing name within racing circles, showing he could drive any kind of car on any kind of circuit – drivers weren’t as specialized in those days – but without the Indy 500 victory in four attempts, Andretti was not yet the racing icon he would eventually become. Foyt, Bobby Unser, Dan Gurney, Lloyd Ruby and others. Now it was 1969, a time when open-wheel racing truly mattered in this country and even casual fans could name the circuit’s stars – A.J. There was no Andretti Curse, not the way there would be from 1970 until the end of his Indy 500 career in 1993, but those first couple of experiences in Indianapolis were frustrating, a sign of things to come at the historic track. The bottom dropped out in 1968 when he blew an engine on the first lap and finished 33rd. In 1967, he again won the pole but a slipping clutch put him six laps behind and ultimately, his car lost a wheel, and he finished 30th.

It started hopefully enough during his first try in 1965, when he finished third and was named the race’s rookie of the year.īut in 1966, he earned the pole by being more than 2 mph faster than anybody else in the field, only to have the engine drop a cylinder on a restart.

The only thing missing from his growing and increasingly impressive résumé was the Indianapolis 500, The Greatest Spectacle in Racing, and while most race cognoscenti figured it was just a matter of time for the young driver, Andretti had run into very bad luck his first four tries.

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