There were many years Mario Andretti should have won the Indianapolis 500, but he didn’t.
Ironically, the year he won the Indy 500 in 1969, he probably shouldn’t have.
Andretti was driving a year-old backup car after a crash during practice at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway destroyed his four-wheel-drive Lotus and left the 29-year-old racer with facial burns. Out came the Brawner Hawk, a car that had won earlier in 1969 but was considered too fragile for the 500-Mile Race.
Andretti already had the look of a future Indianapolis 500 winner when he arrived as a rookie in 1965, driving the Dean Van Lines Special to a third-place finish after starting fourth. He earned the Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year award and went on to claim the USAC championship.
“You talk about the enormity of this race; myself at the end of the year, I was invited on the Johnny Carson show, and proud as a peacock, of course, and I was introduced as not the national champion but as the rookie of the year at Indianapolis,” Andretti recalled. “At that point, I realized how important this race really is. I said, ‘Here I win the national championship, and somehow, they’re probably not even going to mention it.”
He won the pole in 1966 and ’67, but that started a string of three straight years of bad luck in the Indy 500. He was 18th in 1966 with a valve issue after leading 16 laps, lost a wheel in 1967 and finished 30th and had piston failure in 1968, dropping him to a last-place finish.
When he arrived at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1969, Andretti was already a Daytona 500 winner in 1967 and a two-time USAC national champion (1965 and ’66).
He was driving the famed bright-red STP Oil Treatment Special for team owner Andy Granatelli, another hard-luck victim of the 500 who had not won at the speedway.
That all changed on May 30, 1969, when Andretti and Granatelli made it to victory lane with a car that was overheating so badly that 50 years later Andretti still doesn’t know how the engine made it to the finish.
This year, Andretti’s improbable 1969 victory will be celebrated throughout the month of May with banners, special events and a commemorative logo. In addition, the win will be featured on the Bronze and Silver Badges that are used as credentials for the race.
“It’s a race that’s with you forever,” Andretti said. “When you win it, it does change your life in so many ways, and all for the better, quite honestly. Career-wise, it opens doors that you could have only hoped for before, and your personal life changes dramatically.”
After he wonthe Indy 500, Andretti’s wife, Dee Ann, who died on July 2, 2018, knew she would have to share her husband with the rest of the motorsports world.
“Dee Ann used to say, ‘Well, after he won Indy, I kind of lost him,’” Andretti recalled. “But I said, ‘Dee Ann, you’re just going to be traveling a lot more with me, that’s all.’”
The Andrettis knew how enormous an Indy 500 win was to a driver’s career. The 1969 victory was the centerpiece to a third USAC national championship, something that is almost overlooked.
“This race carries so much weight,” Andretti said. “I’ve said this so many times, and I mean it, that it’s the only race on the globe that I think is worth a championship because I think looking back to ’69, it was really a banner year for me. I’ve got four championships in Indy cars and the ’69 one was particularly interesting for me. I feel I was so blessed that the season was so versatile because for the championship you had the dirt cars, you had road courses — I mean, good road courses. The last race of the season was Riverside. And then you even had even Pikes Peak counted for the championship.
“I won on the road course, I won on the short oval and the superspeedway and even Pikes Peak.
“But really the big flower here, the jewel was obviously the 500.”