Immigrant of the Day: Mario Andretti (Italy)

Mario Gabriele Andretti (born February 28, 1940 in Montona d’Istria, Italy, now Motovun, Croatia) is one of the most successful Americans in the history of auto racing. He has competed and won while driving stock cars, midget cars, sprint cars, IndyCars, drag racing cars, sports cars, and single-seater Formula One cars. In his career, Andretti won four IndyCar titles, the 1978 Formula One World Championship, and IROC VI (1978-79). To date, he remains the only driver ever to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969), NASCAR’s 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 Cup series, Formula 1, and an Indianapolis 500. No American has won a Formula One race since Andretti 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. At his final IndyCar win in April 1993, Andretti became the first driver to win IndyCar races in four decades and the first to win races in five decades.

Mario Andretti was born in the town of Montona d’Istria in the then Italian province of Istria. Istria was occupied and annexed by Yugoslavia after World War II. His family, like many other Italian Istrians, fled in 1948. They lived in a refugee camp from 1948 to 1955. The five members of the Andretti family resettled in Nazareth, Pennsylvania in 1955. Andretti became a naturalized United States citizen in 1964.

Click here for the official Mario Andretti website.

KJ