Mario Andretti Opens Up

We asked free-lancer Peter Manso to keep tabs on Mario Andretti throughout the past Grand Prix season. Andretti won the World Championship—the first American to do so since 1961—but at some considerable personal cost. Here, he talks with Manso about the premium he has had to pay, about why he races and why he wins.

[Q] Playboy: Much has been made of Mario Andretti's bridging the worlds of Grand Prix racing and the Indianapolis 500. Yet driving the Grand Prix of Monaco is more demanding, more sophisticated, calling for a more varied technique than Indy, isn't it?

[A] Andretti: You can't draw any parallels, because they're two entirely different worlds. Each presents different problems. Just because you're zigzagging back and forth and shifting 3000 times a race at Monaco doesn't mean it's any more difficult than Indy, where you're averaging 200 miles an hour and the level of concentration is greater. Wherever you are, the slightest lapse in concentration will always drop you out of contention. Some Grand Prix drivers may be more diversified in order to be able to cope with rain, but developing that skill is within the reach of any Indy driver.

[Q] Playboy: There have been drivers such as Stirling Moss, though, who were masters in the rain, who could adapt to almost any set of conditions——

[A] Andretti: Yeah, there are guys who've been labeled rainmasters, but it's no different from oval racing, where there are drivers who excel on dirt. In certain cases, their styles are just more appropriate. Take Niki Lauda, who's one of the best drivers in the world today. He refused to race in the rain in Japan two years ago and possibly sacrificed his second world championship in the process, and then was widely criticized. It was all bullshit, though. They didn't know what they were talking about. Lauda had problems with his eyes tearing and what he did took balls and he doesn't have to defend himself to anybody. He doesn't have to say he loves rain, because nobody does. Only a fool loves to race in the rain. There's no driver in the world who needs that sort of compensation to function properly.

[Q] Playboy: Compensation? What do you mean?

[A] Andretti: The only thing that counts is winning, being better than the next guy. When I'm not winning, I'm the most impossible son of a bitch around and I've probably suffered as many heartbreaks as anyone. I've always performed well at Indianapolis, and yet I've had the most piss-poor record of anyone there in years. I won in 1969, but in '66, '67, my second and third times out, I could have won the two easiest races of my career, but my car just wasn't meant to go the distance. After you break down, you've got so much energy you want to kill something. These things are character builders, though. In my own case, I've been lucky that I haven't been hurt too many times. As long as I have that going for me and can race the next day, or the next week, it keeps me going. I don't have a choice. I can either think that way or go bananas.

[Q] Playboy: Do you know any drivers, either at Indy or in Formula I, who have gone bananas?

[A] Andretti: No, I can't recall any, none of any (continued on page 194) Mario Andretti (continued from page 140) significance, that is. The current crop of drivers is too philosophical, too fatalistic. You know that an accident can happen and, consequently, you've prepared yourself. The whole thing is a calculated risk from the word go.

[Q] Playboy: Which is to say that professional race drivers are tougher than other athletes, more self-aware?

[A] Andretti: I think so, because of the elements we're up against. A tennis player may find himself with an upset stomach or something and it's just an off day, no sweat. For a racer, though, there isn't that kind of leeway. The pressures are too great, not to mention the consequences of fucking up. During practice, I might be a half second quicker than anyone, and then as I'm on the starting line, ready to make my qualifying run, the blower might go. The mechanics will install a new supercharger, but everything still has to be adjusted and there I am, facing two laps of qualifying during which I've got to dial my pressure in as well as set a fast time. I'll be running upwards of 200 mph and, meanwhile, this other stuff is going to screw up my concentration. But it's the kind of thing you learn to live with—just as you live with the possibility that something can go wrong and put you into the wall. I mean, how in hell can you cry over problems like your car breaking down when other people have been killed?

[Q] Playboy: Still, there's the question of courage, just maintaining that kind of composure.

[A] Andretti: Oh, sure, but now we're talking about people who've been just flat-out frightened, and they're rarely the ones who make it to the top. If that kind of thing is going to be a problem every time you sit in a race car, you'd better stay home and sell shoestrings. If you're uptight, your mind isn't free to perform and you're bound to make a mistake; and if I ever found myself that way, I'd just quit, no question about it.

[Q] Playboy: What's your greatest fear?

[A] Andretti: Fire, because nothing maims you like fire. Nothing is more permanent than a fire injury—it disfigures you and it's something you've got to live with for the rest of your life. You can have broken bones or lose a leg, but it's nowhere near as bad as facial burns or burns to the upper body, which is generally where you get them. Something like that has got to affect you psychologically. The fear of being burned is greater, I think, than the fear of dying.

[Q] Playboy: Are you working from the assumption that most racing accidents result from mechanical failure? That by choosing your equipment carefully you minimize the risk?

[A] Andretti: Yeah, most fatal ones do, and so there're ways of preventing them. I don't know of any driver who's been hurt in a Ferrari due to suspension failure, or in a McLaren, either. Certain people—designers and teams—care and you've got to insist on this. Even Jochen Rindt was joking around that he'd be world champion if he didn't kill himself. Well, fine, he didn't speak up loudly enough, and while he became a champion, he also managed to kill himself. There was a brake failure, a broken half shaft, and the car had already had a couple of failures earlier that season. He should have insisted to [Colin] Chapman that it had to stop or he was going to quit. He just wasn't decisive enough.

[Q] Playboy: And the opposite of decisiveness is weakness?

[A] Andretti: Right. It's just like a weakness in a car—I won't tolerate it. Weak is a bad word in this business. It means that somebody can be psyched out too easily, and that means he's dangerous. He's a threat and you have to work against him, just as you do the guy who takes tranquilizers or dope.

[Q] Playboy: Does the same apply to incompetence?

[A] Andretti: You're goddamn right. It's one thing when someone doesn't know something, but incompetence is when somebody just doesn't give a shit. Either he doesn't care or he's too stupid to comprehend. Either way, it pisses me off. Not everybody can be a good soldier, and why? Because to be a good soldier requires solid judgment and a pair of balls that won't fit in this room, and it's just that—that special kind of excellence—that drives you on in this business. There are maybe half a dozen Grand Prix drivers in the world capable of winning, no more, and what I'm saying is that you reach a point where you recognize the kind of discipline such talent costs, that you've actually worked all your life for it and when somebody comes along and puts down the idea of winning, I don't want to be anywhere near him.

[Q] Playboy: Yet you've said that excellence can't always be measured by the record book.

[A] Andretti: Granted. In my own case, almost 50 percent of the races I've run I should have won, but I didn't. I've been fucked so many times by fate.

[Q] Playboy: Fate? What about the notion that a man is responsible for himself? That racers are our last existential heroes?

[A] Andretti: Bullshit. Maybe in the case of your own destiny as a whole, but not when we're talking about leading a race and then having a 20-cent bolt let go. I've gotten screwed more than my fair share and percentagewise I'm walking a very thin line. The odds are numerically against me. Most drivers will do 15 races a year, I've done 30. Hence, my chances of getting hurt are double, and yet, even though I have other interests, such as being involved on Wall Street, real-estate investments and other businesses, nothing compares with racing, nothing else can really satisfy me. I've got to be better than anyone else around, and it's a need that just doesn't go away. Finishing second is losing, and winning, I suppose, is the only way of knowing you're your own man.

[Q] Playboy: At the Grand Prix of Italy, you clinched last season's world championship, though—in the same race—your closest challenger and teammate, Ronnie Peterson, was killed. Afterward, in assessing what had happened, were your feelings mixed?

[A] Andretti: Totally. I had dreamed about becoming world champion for years and thought if the moment ever arrived, I'd be beside myself, but Ronnie's death just overshadowed everything. I was in the hospital while they were operating on him and knew I had the championship from the time I first saw just how badly battered up he was, and I accepted the fact. Then the next day, when he died, nothing mattered. People wanted to congratulate me, but I felt guilty. I'd gone back to the hospital and gotten the news in the parking lot and then just split, drove around by myself for a while. Finally, I went to see my relatives in Florence. The following Wednesday, we had an opening of our steakhouse franchise in West Chester, Pennsylvania, back here in the States, and I called the whole thing off. I didn't want to have to deal with the press, not then.

[Q] Playboy: And now?

[A] Andretti: Time has a way of putting things in perspective. The championship is going to be with me as long as I'm alive and the pleasure of actually having won it increases daily. When everything else looks gloomy, I say, "Christ, at least something went right." Basically, you learn to resign yourself to the fact that things happen, that they're beyond your control. Initially, you may have trouble accepting them out of your own guilt, but that passes.

[Q] Playboy: What about the notion that race drivers are suicidal types, that despite all the rationalization, you're out to kill yourselves?

[A] Andretti: Bullshit. The risks we're taking are entirely calculated. I have fear. I don't want to get hurt or leave my kids fatherless any more than the next man. I need motor racing to enjoy life to the fullest, and I pay for it by taking risks. I'm aware of the equation and as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not alone here, it's a calculated assessment of the pluses and minuses.

[Q] Playboy: Yet most clinical profiles insist that aggression, even libidinal aggression, is the cornerstone of drivers' personalities.

[A] Andretti: That's just an opinion—and a wrong one. If there's any generalization that works at all, it's that racing drivers are placid and calm, particularly the new guys, because the hotheads just aren't around anymore. Knocking a guy in order to get a better position may have been acceptable ten years ago, but now you can't get away with it. The rules are stricter, but more important, the speeds just won't allow it. Also, there's your sponsor. You can't cheat like you used to, because his name's plastered all over your car, and if you get caught, he's been caught, and obviously, that isn't the kind of publicity most sponsors are looking for. Personally, I don't have scruples that run so deep I wouldn't cheat if I thought I had a good chance of getting away with it, but as things stand, the risks are just too great.

[Q] Playboy: What you're saying, then, is that not only has the racing scene changed but psychiatric studies haven't kept pace. By the same token, though, has it changed all that much when it comes to racers and their women?

[A] Andretti: Definitely, and in this respect, I think most of the psychiatric profiles are wrong, too, like when they claim drivers don't need families. The social scene in Formula I has diminished tremendously. In the old days, and here I mean even as late as the early Seventies, we'd go to Italy, say, and with practice at three-thirty in the afternoon, you could stay out all night. The poor bastards who'd be slaving would be the mechanics, but now there's practice as early as nine-thirty and you've got to be up by seven. It's pressure, pressure, pressure, and, let's face it, there are big bucks involved. Your sponsor's name is tied to yours and if you go out and screw around—anything, even taking a goddamn speeding ticket—you've got a black mark against you. Your reputation counts and, believe me, there are people who keep score.

[Q] Playboy: Do drivers' contracts include morals clauses nowadays?

[A] Andretti: They're not written, but they're there, definitely. If you get out of line, you'll be spoken to. You're a public figure and next week your sponsor might be planning on doing a commercial with you, and if I were seen at a press conference, say, with a chick hanging on my arm, I can guarantee you somebody would mention it to my wife and kids and I'd be told to cool it. The old freedoms are simply gone, and gone forever. Too much money is involved.

[Q] Playboy: Have today's racers become cogs in the corporate wheel? All of a sudden, are you wearing three-piece suits?

[A] Andretti: Of course, and the only reason you conform is that if you don't, you won't get the right rides, the proper equipment. So you conform. Like it or not, it's where professionalism comes in. I don't know whether what we used to do was actually fun or plain vandalism, but the pranks have disappeared. My God, I can recall once when Pedro Rodriguez and I had a rental car at the 24 Hours of Daytona, we were hot and tired and figured we needed to cool off, so we just drove the thing down into the surf.

[Q] Playboy: Hasn't the new professionalism, though, also increased the level of competition, possibly created a better class of drivers?

[A] Andretti: In general, yes, particularly in Formula I. Nowadays, the competition's far more sophisticated than it used to be. The turkeys just can't make it to the top anymore. There are still a few rich guys who're buying their own equipment and can't drive for shit, but it's not like it used to be when maybe half the field was made up of "amateurs." All you have to do is look at the qualifying times: For almost every Grand Prix last season, the first dozen positions on the grid were separated by maybe two seconds, the first four by fractional tenths, and, again, I think it comes back to money. You don't see any of the wealthy buggers coming in and tearing anything apart, because they're not hungry enough. The bait you're after has got to be the big dollar bill. There's got to be blood on your teeth or otherwise the whole thing, all the pressures and complications, just isn't worth it.

[Q] Playboy: It's rumored that Renault offered you $1,500,000 to drive its turbocharged Grand Prix car. Are the pressures of having won the championship worth it?

[A] Andretti: The championship sweetens the pie, puts me in a far better bargaining position. The people buying me are trying to sell me and I'm not going to forget that I'm a salable item. With the Formula I championship, the figures can triple. Depending on how much energy he's got, on how greedy he wants to be, a guy can put away $2,000,000 for the following season. Whereas you thought you were really well off asking $3500 a day for personal appearances, say, for an auto show or whatever, now you can ask $15,000. But I don't think I'm going to want to work that hard.

[Q] Playboy: You'll be concentrating on Formula I, then?

[A] Andretti: Right. I'm planning on not doing Indianapolis. Finally, something is catching up with me and I don't know whether it's age or the effects of transatlantic travel, but I've got to restrict myself. I've only realized this recently, started to do a real search as to what the hell is happening inside myself, and I realize I've just been trying to do too much. The opportunities are there and you can't believe the money, it really boggles your mind, but there are limits and you're the only one who can impose them.

[Q] Playboy: In other words, the championship has come along so late in your life that you're not about to be swept off your feet like a lot of rock stars.

[A] Andretti: Exactly. Instead of enjoying my racing, on occasion, I've found myself beginning to hate it, and that can be very dangerous.

"Weak is a bad word in this business. It means that somebody can be psyched out too easily."