Racing Legend Joins Automotive Rally

NEW YORK — Racing legend Mario Andretti will participate in the first leg of this year’s Bullrun rally, which starts in New York City on Saturday at 8 a.m. The 2006 Bullrun: New York to Los Angeles rally is an invite-only, coast-to-coast adventure for automotive enthusiasts wanting to blow off some steam on the open road. This year’s escapade is a highly secretive seven-day journey. The race is so confidential, even the famed Andretti is not sure of what to expect.

Mario Andretti has joined the 2006 Bullrun rally as a member of Team MagnaFlow.

“They will put me in some spiffy cars and try to have some fun with it,” said Andretti. “It’s an activity for certain individuals to experience something different, something fun, organized city to city, to stay at the best places and have some nice, lavish parties.”

Most of the event specifics, including the destinations, are being kept under wraps. Andretti doesn’t know where he is headed on Saturday or what the first checkpoint will be.

“It’s so sketchy, they don’t want me to divulge anything, because I guess that’s the way they operate. [They say,] ‘Just be there and then we’ll tell you what to do.’ That’s fine with me,” he said.

What is confirmed is that the former racer will be splitting his time between a 2006 Panoz Esperante GTLM-R and a 2007 Audi RS4, and that his participation ends at the first checkpoint. Although he will not be continuing on to L.A., Andretti will perform hot laps, which is when a driver tries to beat a time, at the first checkpoint, which will likely be in the Panoz.

Click here to see a preview of the 2006 Bullrun.

The Making of a Legend

Mario Andretti's first car, a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air + click to enlarge | view slideshow >

Mario and his twin brother, Aldo, were born in 1940 in Montona in the then-Italian Istrian peninsula (now Motovun, Croatia). After World War II Istria was ceded to Communist Yugoslavia as part of the post-war political settlement. The Andretti family fled in 1948 and relocated to a refugee camp in Lucca, a city in the Tuscan region of Italy. After a seven-year wait for their visas, the family sailed to the U.S. and arrived in New York Harbor in June 1955.

The twin brothers brought along with them a love for racing. Both were inspired in 1954 when watching Alberto Ascari race in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

“That is what I pursued. I had no plan B, and it all happened,” said Mario.

After the family settled in Nazareth, Pa., Mario and Aldo rebuilt an old Hudson into a stock car and took turns racing on dirt oval tracks near their home. Both started winning immediately; in 1959 Mario won the first race he entered, at the wheel of that 1948 Hudson Hornet Sportsman Stock Car. However, Aldo’s racing career ended prematurely; he retired in 1969 after a major accident.

Mario went on to become the only driver ever to win the Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 500 and the Formula One World Championship. In 36 years of racing Andretti competed in 879 races, had 111 wins and 109 poles in all forms of motor sports. He has driven about 172 different race cars and has a true passion for the sport. Andretti was also named Driver of the Century by RACER magazine in 2000 and has been in hall of fames ranging from the National Italian-American Sports Hall of Fame in 1981 to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2000.

Related Story: Rallying Cars and Racing Stars

While racking up this impressive list of accomplishments, Andretti somehow squeezed in a personal life.  He was married in 1961 and he and his wife Dee Ann still live in Nazareth.  They have three children, Michael, Jeffrey and Barbara, and five grandchildren.

He recalled a particular weekend as one of his favorite racing experiences — during the 1986 Pocono 500, when he and his two sons  were all competing. Jeff was driving in the support event; he won the pole position and the race. During the main event, Michael had the pole position and Mario won the race.

“Between the three of us, we won everything that there was to win. As a family, that was definitely one of our favorite days of our careers,” said Andretti.

The racing “gene” also carried down to his grandson, Marco Andretti,19, who recently finished second in the 2006 Indianapolis 500.

“You cannot teach someone to go fast; it’s either inside of them or not. It’s something either you have or you don’t, but you can teach them to be better,” said Andretti. “It has to come from within, a desire to succeed in that particular field. And then you hone it out, you make the best of your skills.”

Life After Racing
During the course of a long and successful career, Andretti was fortunate enough never to have sustained a serious injury. He raced until he was 54; in almost every other professional sport, the peak of most people’s careers is in their 30s, he said.

“I had a fairly uninterrupted career; I only missed two races because of injuries from 1959 to 1994,” said Andretti. “I won races right up until the very end of my career. At least I was competitive and I was enjoying it. But because of that, it was difficult for me to let go. If you love something that you do, like I did, you don’t want to let go.”

Even though Andretti retired from the fast-paced, adrenaline-filled lifestyle of racing, his present-day life is still surrounded by the sport. He considers himself somewhat of a spokesman for Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART), which he hopes will reunite with the Indy Racing League (IRL) in order to save his beloved sport of the open wheel. He also tries to attend as many of his grandson Marco’s races as possible. While Andretti misses the disciplined life of being a racer, he is content that he currently has so many interesting endeavors.

“I had to do some readjusting. We have a lot of challenges still in front of us, different types of challenges, but nevertheless challenges,” he said.

Mario Andretti at the Andretti Winery + click to enlarge

When Andretti retired in 1994, a commemorative wine was produced in his honor, sparking his interest in the wine business. Along with Joseph E. Antonini, former president, chairman and CEO of Kmart, Andretti formed the Andretti Wine Group (AWG), and bought a 53-acre redwood ranch in Napa Valley, Calif., and revamped it into a Tuscan villa. The Andretti Winery, which celebrated its 10-year anniversary in June, released its first estate wines under the Montona label in 2003.

Other business undertakings of his include the Mario Andretti Racing School in Las Vegas and Andretti Indoor Karting and Games. Andretti also works with Chevron Corporation and had a recent cameo appearance in Disney Pixar’s Cars. In addition he serves as a spokesman for MagnaFlow Performance Exhaust, the "official exhaust" of the annual Bullrun rally.

A 2005 inductee into the Automotive Hall of Fame, Andretti indulges his passion for cars with a rotating lineup of vehicles. Presently he owns an Audi A8, a Lamborghini Murciélago and a Chevrolet Corvette Z06.

“These are just absolute fun cars, and that’s my favorite at the time because that’s what I own,” said Andretti. “Whenever I get tired of those, I just get something else.”

With continual advances in technology in luxury and sports cars, Andretti said that he sees the computer as a luxury item in vehicles. New technology that is being discovered every year helps the automobile industry, especially in racing, in order to make vehicles much faster, safer and more fuel efficient. The cars are being perfected, with all the latest comforts, sound systems, satellite radio, even computers can be used to work with the engine suspension, he said.

“You get to the point that the car will talk back to you and say, ‘Hey, you stupid idiot, don’t do that,’” said Andretti. “By the time you are ready to sell the car, you’ve just about learned what all the systems are about.”

Click here to see more ForbesAutos.com coverage from the 2006 Bullrun.

Chevrolet image © 2006 GM Corp.