Aldo Andretti, Mario’s twin, dies
Aldo Andretti, twin brother of racing legend Mario Andretti and an accomplished driver in his own right, dies at age 80.“I’m shaken to my core,” the Nazareth-area Andretti tweeted.
Mario Andretti announced on Twitter Thursday that his twin brother, Aldo, died Wednesday night at the age of 80.
The racing legend, a Nazareth-area resident, described his brother as his “partner and crime and my faithful best friend every day of my life.”
“There is no eloquence,” Mario Andretti said. “I’m shaken to my core.”
Aldo’s son John Andretti died
Jan. 30 at age 57 following a battle with colon cancer.
Born in Italy, the Andretti brothers were teenagers when their family came to the Lehigh Valley in the 1950s and settled in Nazareth. They continued their passion for racing when discovering the Nazareth Speedway.
In 1959, the brothers rebuilt a 1948 Hudson Commodore into a stock car and began racing it without telling their parents. They flipped a coin to see who would drive in the first race. Aldo won the coin toss, the heat race and the feature. They each had two wins after the first four weeks.
A 2007 Morning Call story on Aldo’s racing career described him “as good as his brother” Mario until a vicious crash at Hatfield Speedway in Montgomery County in 1959 altered history. The crash put Aldo into a coma and a priest administered last rites, but four days later he
woke up.
In 1964, Aldo moved his wife and children from Nazareth to Indianapolis, Indiana, to be closer to the tracks where he was racing. For the next five years, he ran sprint cars on the U.S. Auto Club and International Motor Contest Association circuits.
In 1967, the Andretti brothers’ only race against each other took place at Oswego Speedway in NewYork. Mario wonas brake failure caused Aldo to finish in tenth place.
Aldo competed in 16 USAC national sprint car races from 1967 to 1969, when he suffered a severe facial injury in a crash in Des Moines, Iowa. He then quit racing at Mario’s request.
“I was always behind what he did,” Aldo once told the Morning Call about Mario’s racing career continuing on into legend. “It was bittersweet, but it was never jealousy.”
In 1973, Aldo opened a retail business, Andretti Firestone, in Brownsburg, Indiana. The married father of five quit that business in 1986 and started Andretti Machine Engineering, a machine shop for hospital beds and tool manufacturers.
“Half of me went with him,” Mario tweeted after Aldo died.