Despite the growth of sports science, data analysis, nutritional wisdom and technical know-how, the dark art of superstition still pollutes the minds of many followers of world sport, with many fans believing the failures of their chosen teams and athletes is a result of outside intervention as opposed to more logical reasoning. This belief in sporting curses has also been translated to the Indianapolis 500, and in the process helped to turn the legacy of motor racing’s first family into a 50-year tale of hard luck and misfortune.
There is very little that Mario Andretti failed achieve throughout his 30-year racing career, with victories in the Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 500 as well as a Formula One World Championship just some of the many racing highlights of a man considered by many to be one of the greatest natural talents ever to grace the sport. For all of the achievements and plaudits delivered his way however, Mario’s later career became somewhat tainted by history of misfortune when it came to the Indianapolis 500. In the 29 times in which he contested the race, Mario was only able to claim victory at the Brickyard on one occasion in 1969, and despite remaining competitive throughout the remainder of his career was unable to ever claim a second win to add to his early career triumph, whilst other Brickyard legends of the era including AJ Foyt, Rick Mears and the Unser family would go on to record multiple victories in the 500 at the expense of Andretti, and such was the level of notoriety surrounding Mario at the speedway that some local book-makers were known to take bets from fans on which lap Mario would drop out of the race.
According to most reports, the origins of the Andretti Curse at Indianapolis date back to 1969, when Mario first struck a deal with colourful team boss Andy Granatelli to drive his team’s Brawner Hawk chassis for the 1969 season. Although Andretti had failed to finish in three of his first starts at the 500, the young Italian immigrant was held in high regard by many within the Indycar paddock, after qualifying for the race in second on the grid (at the time the most common source of 500 winners) Mario quickly emerged as one of the standout contenders for victory when Memorial Day weekend finally arrived. During the race itself Mario went on to dominate, getting the jump on pole-sitter AJ Foyt at the start before cruising to victory in comfortable fashion to claim the first victory for both himself and team-owner Granatelli. During the post-race ceremonies, Granatelli broke with tradition and joined Andretti in victory lane, pulling the 28-year-old over towards him before delivering a joyous kiss onto his left cheek, and in the minds of many helping to instigate the curse that would befall the Italian driver during his next 25 attempts at the Brickyard. Another theory, put forward by veteran motor racing journalist Robin Miller, suggests that the origins of the curse actually stemmed from 1970, when Granatelli and co-owner Clint Brawner were involved in a feud over the day to day running of their operation, with Andretti choosing to side with Granatelli when the two decided to go their separate ways at the end of the season. Upset at what she saw as betrayal, Brawner’s wife Kay supposedly put a hex on Andretti and Granatelli, promising an Andretti would never win the 500 again.
In the defence of his title in 1970, Andretti finished in sixth place after suffering handling problems throughout the race, before going through an alarming run of results that would seem him complete just 17 laps in the space of four races, with an accident taking him out of the 1971 race after 11 laps before mechanical issues would bring about a premature end in both 1973 and 1974, whilst his 1972 appearance saw him run out of fuel with six laps to go whilst in contention for the race win. Such was the level of misfortune that Andretti suffered at the Brickyard, that it wouldn’t be until 1981 that Mario would next be able to complete the 500 on the lead lap, finishing eight seconds behind winner and former teammate Bobby Unser to claim second after starting the race from the back of the grid. After Unser was penalised for passing cars during a caution period however Andretti was declared as the winner of the race, even going as far as posing with the Borg Warner trophy in the traditional post-race photos and attending the post-race gala as the guest of honour following his perceived triumph. Unser and car owner Roger Penske however appealed the race stewards’ decision, and four months after being declared the winner Unser’s penalty was rescinded and forced Mario back into second place. An attempt to redeem the controversial finish in 1982 also came to nought, when Andretti was caught up in a start line crash involving Kevin Cogan, putting Andretti out of the race before the race had even begun.
By 1987 talk about the hoodoo surrounding Mario had begun to enter the mainstream, with ABC running a segment prior to that year’s running of the race over whether Mario did have a curse placed on him at the Brickyard. Ironically it would be in that race that Mari would suffer one of his biggest strokes of misfortune; after dominating both the race and the entire month of May Andretti led the race comfortably heading into the later stages, and began backing off the throttle in a bid to conserve his engine for the remainder of the race. The decreased pace however caused a harmonic imbalance in the engine, resulting in a spring failure which dropped him out of the race with just 23 laps remaining. Further mechanical issues would follow in 1988 and 1990, before his final Indy 500 would come to a premature end when he was forced out of the race following his first pit-stop of the race.
In 1984, Mario’s eldest son Michael made his debut at the speedway, and despite an encouraging start to his career in which he finished in the top six three times in five years soon began to be struck down by the misfortune that befell his father during the race. Whilst Mario’s ill-luck at the speedway stemmed from mechanical failures that put him out of the race in the early stages, Michael seldom dropped out early, and was in contention numerous times. His career being peppered with more near-misses than out-and-out failures. The most tragic of which came in 1992, when Michael had emerged as the dominant force throughout the entirety of the race, taking the lead from sixth place on the first lap on his way to leading a race-high 160 laps, only for his fuel pump to fail with just 11 laps remaining to hand the win to family rivals the Unsers for an eighth triumph. During the race, both Mario and younger son Jeff would both suffer accidents in the race, with Jeff’s injuries being so severe that it would all but curtail his Indycar career in the process. In his autobiography Andretti, Mario described the day, which saw him laid up in a hospital bed, witnessing his youngest son’s serious injury, and then woke up to hear the news that his other son Michael had lost, as the “worst day of my life.”
By 2008 Michael too had retired from driving, taking with him the dubious honour of leading more laps at the speedway then any other driver yet to win the race, and leaving Mario’s Grandson Marco as the sole family rep competing in the race. Although Marco has yet to suffer the extreme unreliability of his grandfather, his tenure at the Brickyard has been littered with a number of high profile failures, losing the race on the start finish straight to Sam Hornish Jr in 2006, and coming extremely close to missing the race entirely in 2011 after he and the entire Andretti team struggled for speed throughout the month of May. Despite this however, as of 2016 Marco has the best finishing record of all of his family when it comes to Indianapolis, and with the 100th running of the race just around the corner there would be no more an appropriate time for Marco to put the family curse behind him and his family once and for all.
In today’s video Mario, Michael and Marco speak about their ill-luck at the Brickyard:
https://vimeo.com/126632287
100 Years 100 Moments 