Sabotage at Daytona

Mario Andretti was never meant to win the Daytona 500 in 1967. The young Italian, just 26 at the time of his win, had become an American citizen, embraced everything about his new country, including its love affair with oval racing, and arrived at Daytona with the momentum of being IndyCar’s rising star.

Fred Lorenzen, his Holman Moody team mate, was among NASCAR’s best in the 1960’s and Ford had decided he would be the one to win Daytona for the Blue Oval.

Mario Andretti remembers: “I just turned out to be the experimental boy there alongside Fred Lorenzen, even though he wasn’t volunteering any help at all… which was fine. I was just the new guy on the block there. The problem was, the team gave me an old engine, less revs, less power, I still managed to qualify 12th, thanks to a really low spoiler that gave me straight line speed, but less stability.”

Mario Andretti continues: “In the race, the car was very loose, especially in traffic, but it was manageable. I was drifting in the corners at 180 mph! I had to lead, I had to lead. If you were following someone, it was really, really tough. So I had to lead.”

Mario dominated, leading 112 of the 200 laps. He was heading for the win dominating his highly rated team mate, but had to stop for a final pit stop.

“We came in, I was leading with Freddie behind me.” Andretti recalled. “The team kept me up on the jacks and let Freddie go. And he was just about at Turn 1 already before they let me go… I was so pissed, as you can imagine.”

“I was so enraged that I drove like I was qualifying, passed him and pulled away. Once I was clear on my own, I just drove ten tenth, until I saw the checkered flag.”

“Am not sure everyone was happy with me winning, including Ford, they wanted Lorenzen to win, not me, because it was a one-off race for me,” Mario said.

But what a fantastic win it was and Mario Andretti became a legend of motor racing: being the only driver in history to win the Daytona 500 (1967), the Indy 500 (1969) and the Formula One World Championship (1978).