The Ferrari comeback of an American F1 icon

Things were different, then.

You could be racing on a US dirt oval on a Saturday and attempting to start your first Formula 1 grand prix – the Italian, at Monza – on the Sunday. You could jet overnight from Indiana to Milan, with your chief championship rival as your wing man – the guy for whom you’d also found an F1 ride that weekend with the BRM team, so you could tow each other around Monza’s long straights like you did back home. You could pass through customs and commandeer the waiting Mini, previously steered by a Lotus mechanic, because you, Mario Andretti, and your partner in crime, Bobby Unser, were really in a dreadful hurry.

You might even be able to dupe a track security guard by faking your pass, gunning your engine before he knew what was happening and arriving finally in the Monza paddock where Lotus team boss Colin Chapman, the man who had promised you a Formula 1 drive “any time you were ready”, would greet you with bad news.

“There’s been a protest,” he would tell you bluntly. “You can’t race.”

And, rules being rules, for all the Herculean efforts of your continent-straddling caper, you’d be turning away from the Lotus 49B you’d already lapped fast enough in practice for 10th on the grid. Why? Because you had fallen foul of a rule that said drivers couldn’t start more than one race in the same 24-hour period.

So despite two days of transatlantic track-hopping, you’d be leaving the circuit where you’d witnessed your hero, Alberto Ascari, racing in the 1954 Italian Grand Prix when you were just 14, the year before your family set sail for the US in pursuit of a more prosperous life. You, Mario Andretti, would have to wait another day to make your F1 debut proper. But Monza, in September 1968, was where it began.

Andretti, deep in talks with Lotus boss Colin Chapman, was barred from making his F1 debut at Monza in 1968

Photo by: Motorsport Images

The invitation to race for Lotus dated back a few years, to the May 1965 day Andretti had met Chapman at Indianapolis, where he and his sublime champion, Jim Clark, were preparing to win the 500.

Chapman made good on his promise by offering Andretti a ride in two late-’68 grands prix – the first at Monza, the second being the US GP at Watkins Glen, a month later. While it seems unimaginable now that the corseted world of Formula 1 would allow a driver to race a third top-team car for a brace of season-closing GPs, strictures were less tight back in the day. As Andretti recalls in that lazy drawl, full of bonhomie: “To me, yeah, it was normal… the things that we were allowed to do then.

“It went back to 1965, at Indianapolis, when I befriended Colin and Jimmy. My objective was to enter Formula 1 sometime during my career. When we were saying our goodbyes, I said to Colin: ‘Some day I would like to do Formula 1.’ And Colin said: ‘Mario, when you think you’re ready, call me and I will have a third car for you.’ You could not do that today, but he was true to his word. How sweet was that?”

There’s no lingering bitterness that what might have been the most perfect F1 debut was scuppered by a rules-stickler protest. And besides, the rush of the racing calendar soon had Andretti back in the 49B’s cockpit at The Glen, where he carved its contours swiftly enough to place the Lotus on pole for his first dedicated grand prix. The regulars took note.

It didn’t take long for Enzo Ferrari to patch a call through to Andretti. The two had history

“That was a car that felt very, very good to me immediately,” Andretti recalls, “because the experience I had in single-seaters at that level were Indycars and they were obviously much heavier, not as nimble. But I got into an F1 car and ‘Oh, my God, this car is doing exactly what I want it to do.’”

The dream came with a caveat. Andretti’s 49 was a third Lotus in the days when the team struggled to field even two front-line cars. Champion-to-be Graham Hill had all the top kit; Jackie Oliver in the second car had best of the rest. For Andretti, in car number three, it was a case of ‘make do and mend’.

“It was a spare car and that’s why I think I didn’t finish, because we didn’t have a fresh engine in it. And Maurice Philippe, my engineer, had told me clearly to try to be very ginger on everything – clutch, and so forth. And he told me I had a test engine with miles on it, and eventually it was the clutch that went. And there’s only so much you can do to look after a clutch. But that’s what took me out of the race.”

Andretti might also have pointed out the broken fastener that loosened the nosecone and left his front wing dragging along the track, lessening downforce. The loss of balance allowed the chasing Jackie Stewart to pass before Andretti retired, but the new kid on the block had made his point.

Andretti had to wait until Watkins Glen to make his debut aboard a Lotus 49B - he took pole and was second despite wing damage until his clutch gave up

Photo by: David Phipps

“Well, it couldn’t really have been any better than that,” he says, “you know, from a personal satisfaction point of view. I’d wanted Formula 1 so bad, because that’s where my pure love was at the very beginning of my life –it’s what drew me to the sport itself. And then Colin being so willing to give me this opportunity. It was golden. And then of course, together, we achieved the ultimate goal of the world championship.”

Andretti’s 1978 title-winning year, driving alongside ‘Superswede’ Ronnie Peterson, is the stuff of F1 legend. The swooningly gorgeous Lotus 79 cars, whose slick black bodywork hid revolutionary underfloor aerodynamics that dramatically increased cornering grip and speed, dominated the championship and gave Andretti the drivers’ crown, at the Italian GP.

Infamously, of course, there was tragedy amid triumph. At the start of the Monza race Peterson’s Lotus was tagged by James Hunt’s McLaren, nudging it into a fiery impact with the barriers. Peterson, with serious leg injuries, was pulled from his car by Hunt and fellow driver Clay Regazzoni, then taken to hospital.

Andretti won the restarted race, though he was later penalised by a minute for jumping the start. Through the chaos, which had eliminated Peterson – his only serious title rival – from contention, Andretti emerged as world champion at the circuit where he had been bewitched by F1 as a teenager and where he had won the grand prix, undisputed, a year earlier.

Still, though, brooding Monza would have the final say. During the night, post-race complications from Peterson’s treatment resulted in blood clots and a stroke. He died in his hospital bed.

In the biography, A Driving Passion, Andretti recalls: “I got up Monday morning with Dee Ann [Mario’s wife] and we drove to the hospital. I took the Autostrada and as I was getting off at the tollbooth, the guy said: ‘Are you going to the hospital?’ And I said: ‘Yes.’ And the guy said: ‘Ronnie just died. I heard it on the radio.’ I was totally devastated. Dee Ann and I had just been talking about his rehabilitation.”

Across a quarter of a century, Andretti and Monza had gone full circle. From teenage infatuation, to adult consummation, albeit in the most challenging circumstances. And La Pista Magica held one more enchantment for this favoured son.

It was cast in 1982, as a coda to Andretti’s F1 career, which had petered out post-title, Mario hampered by uncompetitive Lotuses in 1979-80 and an abortive 1981 adventure with Alfa Romeo. For 1982 he was back Stateside, racing Indycars again, though his F1 potential hadn’t been forgotten. He was called upon by Williams for the Long Beach GP, to sub for Carlos Reutemann, who had quit without warning right after the preceding Brazilian race. Then, a few months later, came the call from Ferrari.

Andretti had been called up by Williams for Long Beach in 1982 after Reutemann suddenly quit, but would get a memorable farewell later in the year

Photo by: Motorsport Images

The Scuderia, frontrunner with the powerful and elegant 126C2, had endured the most torrid season. Its drivers, Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi, had gone to war over disputed race tactics and during qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix Villeneuve suffered a fatal accident. Seven races later, champion-elect Pironi was left with career-ending leg injuries after an accident during qualifying for the German Grand Prix.

It didn’t take long for Enzo Ferrari to patch a call through to Andretti. The two had history. Andretti had raced part-seasons for Ferrari in 1971 and 1972; indeed, he had won his first grand prix with Ferrari, South Africa ’71, in his maiden F1 race with the team. There was mutual respect. And at Monza, in qualifying for the ’82 Italian GP, there was about to be one hell of a final fling, on what some who were there recall as Monza’s greatest day.

“They needed a driver and I felt very privileged that Mr Ferrari thought of me,” says Andretti. “Of course, I accepted and then I had the opportunity to test, because I had not driven the turbocharged F1 engine at the time. It was not easy, actually, to adapt, because the basic normally aspirated engine was only 1.5-litres, with not much power, but then when the turbo power came on, it was like… like… like a charge of dynamite.”

"I knew I felt good enough to just leave things alone and then go to Monza. And the thing that helped me in Monza, I had some little tricks on my own, you know, to really tune the car so it’s as perfect as I could possibly have it" Mario Andretti

Ferrari being Ferrari, there was lunch (steak and pasta) before testing and Andretti counts the one-to-one time with the Old Man among his most treasured experiences.

“You know, I loved to do that,” he says. “It was the one time that you could just have some good conversation with the man. And it was always a golden opportunity to do that.

“His drivers at the time didn’t speak much Italian, so that’s the best part for me. He loved that, talking in Italian. That’s why I could deal with him directly. He always treated me with respect, right back to 1971, when he offered me the number-one drive that I couldn’t fully accept because of my racing commitments in the US.”

A decade on, they were about to conclude some unfinished business.

“We went straight to the track [Ferrari’s private circuit, Fiorano], because I was going to do a shakedown. And I took a few laps – no corner workers, no safety there, I remember. I was feeling good and said I would like to do some more running… I was liking what I felt. So they brought in all the security people and so forth and I kept running for 87 laps – after a steak lunch!”

Andretti, pictured in 1971, had won his first grand prix for Ferrari in South Africa that year and relished his discussions with Enzo Ferrari

Photo by: David Phipps

By the end technical chief Mauro Forghieri had turned up the wick on the V6, to give Andretti a taste of how the car would behave under full boost. “I set a record that lasted eight years.”

Ferrari was keen to do another day’s testing, but Andretti was confident he had the 126 in a sweet spot and declared: “No, I don’t want to touch a thing.”

Instead of more track time, Andretti chose headspace and took off next day with Dee Ann for a motorcycle blast through the Abetone Pass.

“I knew I felt good enough to just leave things alone and then go to Monza,” he says. “And the thing that helped me in Monza, I had some little tricks on my own, you know, to really tune the car so it’s as perfect as I could possibly have it. And it worked out. I felt that I could be a force to be reckoned with.”

The cold stats say Mario Andretti, in a Ferrari, beat Nelson Piquet’s Brabham to pole position by 0.035s. The cold stats say nothing of passion.

Andretti chuckles: “Luckily, I just put it in there. But it was… it was amazing, the lap that I did. I almost had the back end break loose through the Lesmos… I was almost sideways… but I kept my foot in and I thought ‘I hope this is good enough’ because I could never duplicate that. It was extremely satisfying.”

Rapture.

“It was so incredibly satisfying, to do it for Ferrari where they’d had such a terrible season, and the reaction from the tifosi was incredible – even by their standards. There were two or three minutes left in qualifying and they were already out on the track when I was on my cool-down laps. You know, the emotion that the tifosi in Italy show is something that you don’t experience anywhere else, because they don’t respect the rules. They just do what they need to do. Those are such great moments.”

On his first time in the Ferrari 126C2, Andretti scored a memorable pole at Monza

Photo by: Motorsport Images

For an American idol who’d always worn his Italian heart so proudly on his flameproof sleeve, there could have been no sweeter experience.

“You have no idea how much this meant to me in every way,” he says. “You know I’d won in Monza and I clinched the world championship in Monza. It was Monza that actually ignited my passion for the sport. Monza was the Mecca.”

"I may have a US passport, but my blood is Italian and that will never change" Mario Andretti

Race day didn’t deliver the win a Hollywood script might have demanded – a failing turbo limited Andretti to third place. But as a final flare in a storied F1 career, it took some beating. (A non-score in his concluding grand prix, in Las Vegas, two weeks later, was largely forgettable.)

“I may have a US passport, but my blood is Italian,” Andretti reflects, “and that will never change. The experiences I had at Monza, with Ferrari, and with Mr Ferrari… Those moments are precious for the rest of my life.”

Andretti still savours his 1982 Italian GP pole over 40 years on

Photo by: David Phipps