Mario Gabriele Andretti (born February 28, 1940) is a retired Italian-born American automobile racing driver, one of the most successful Americans in the history of the sport. He is one of only two drivers to win races in the four major motor racing categories: Formula One, IndyCar, World Sportscar Championship and NASCAR, the other being Dan Gurney. He also won races in midget cars, sprint cars and drag racing.

During his career, Andretti won four IndyCar titles (three under USAC-sanctioning, one under CART), the 1978 Formula One World Championship, and IROC VI. To date, he remains the only driver ever to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969), Daytona 500 (1967) and the Formula One World Championship, and, along with Juan Pablo Montoya, the only driver to have won a race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Formula One, and an Indianapolis 500. No American has won a Formula One race since Andretti's victory at the 1978 Dutch Grand Prix. Andretti had 109 career wins on major circuits.

Andretti had a long career in racing. He was the only person to be named United States Driver of the Year in three decades (1967, 1978, and 1984). He was also one of only three drivers to win races on road courses, paved ovals, and dirt tracks in one season, a feat that he accomplished four times. With his final IndyCar win in April 1993, Andretti became the first driver to win IndyCar races in four different decades and the first to win automobile races of any kind in five.

In American popular culture, his name has become synonymous with speed, similar to Barney Oldfield in the early twentieth century and Stirling Moss in the United Kingdom.

Early life

Mario Andretti and his twin brother Aldo were born into an Italian family in Motovun (then Montona), Istria, on February 28, 1940 to a farm administrator named Luigi and his wife Rina. Istria was then a region of Italy but became a part of Yugoslavia with the conclusion of World War II in 1945 and the Treaty of Paris finalizing Istria from Italy. Three years later in 1948 Mario, Aldo, their sister Anna Maria, and their parents left Istria during the period of the Istrian exodus for a camp in Lucca, Italy. The family emigrated to the United States of America in 1955 and settled in Nazareth in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley in June of that year with just $125. Andretti became a naturalized United States citizen in 1964.

Childhood involvement in motorsports

The twins' mother Rina said that when they were two years old, they would take pot lids out of the cupboards and run around the kitchen, going "Vroom, vroom," like they were driving cars - this before they had seen a car. In 1945, at the age of five, he and Aldo were racing their hand-crafted wooden cars through the steep streets of their hometown. Later, the brothers were hired by a garage to park cars, Andretti described the experience in his book What's It Like Out There: "The first time I fired up a car, felt the engine shudder and the wheel come to life in my hands, I was hooked. It was a feeling I can't describe. I still get it every time I get into a race car." Andretti's first racing experience was in a new youth racing league called Formula Junior