MARIO ANDRETTI
Starts Best result 2nd (1995)
American legend Andretti’s poor luck at the Indianapolis 500 is infamous, but at least he did win it once. He could, perhaps should, have won Le Mans as well, but misfortune and the odd error denied him.
In 1967 he was in one of the fancied Ford MKIVS, but crashed out in controversial circumstances, while an extra lap could have brought him an emotional victory in ’83 with son Michael and Philippe Alliot, given the state of the two works Porsche 956s ahead.
In 1995, Andretti arguably lost the race twice. There was originally a plan for him to drive the TWR Porsche that later became a double Le Mans winner with Joest. But politics meant Porsche withdrew the car.
Andretti then joined the works Courage Le Mans squad, alongside Bob Wollek and Eric Helary. Andretti was caught out while lapping Antonio Hermann’s Kremer and crashed at the Porsche Curves early in the race. The ensuing repairs cost the Courageporsche five laps. They charged to second, finishing a lap behind the winners. There were a few near misses, but were you happy you did the best job that you could, that factors out of your control cost you? Well, you have to go with that. In 1995 I made a mistake. It was wet, it was early on in the race. I didn’t have to force the situation but I thought that in the car in front of me was Hans Stuck; instead it was another driver and he put me off. But we still won the [WSC] class; I still have a first place Le Mans trophy in my trophy case. Of course you want to win overall, but I can still claim on my record that I won Le Mans if I won the class, don’t you think? The battle that we did, coming back from the deficit that we had, I think was pretty good. We had fun doing that and I think I did my part in the wet at night. I made up a lot of laps.
What about 1967, when a crash put you out?
I knew the car very well and we had won at Sebring. I had been a part of all the tests with Bruce Mclaren and so in ’67 they put me with Lucien Bianchi, who was a good friend and a very reliable partner, but he wasn’t the quickest guy there. The formidable team that we were up against turned out to be Dan Gurney and AJ Foyt. I was up against AJ and Lucien against Dan. And I knew quite honestly that I was quicker than AJ, so I felt that I really needed to put time between us when AJ and I were out there, and I did. But we had some issues with the brakes. The rotors would come apart, but you had to live with it until you changed the pads and then they would change the discs as well.
I handed the car to Lucien around 1am and he went out and, of course, the brake pedal was jumping all over the place and he came in. He hadn’t done much testing so he wasn’t familiar. He was discussing the situation just like we’re in practice and I said, ‘I busted my balls to put time between us’ and then he went out again and came in again. He made them change the pads, but changing the pads was not the issue. I pulled him out of the car and said, ‘You know what, I’m going back in.’
Braking for the Dunlop chicane [on his out-lap], the steering wheel came right out of my hand. On the right side where they changed the brake pads, they had put them on backwards. One of the mechanics was not very familiar with disc brakes because they were stock car mechanics and stock cars still had drum brakes. It just locked the right. We had 80 gallons of fuel so the car was very heavy. I tried wrestling with the steering wheel and just turned right head-on into the earth bank. I was lucky there, but they blamed me because the Roger Mccluskey and Jo Schlesser cars were right behind and they crashed to avoid me, so I took two team cars out. That was an unfortunate time for sure.