Senior Editor

Mario Andretti became interested in auto racing as a young boy in Italy. He saw his racing idol Alberto Scotti compete in the 1954 Italian Grand Prix and knew then racing was the “dream of my life.”
But it wasn’t until his family moved to Nazareth, Pa., in 1955 that the sport became his passion.
“Racing season was in full swing. We arrived here in the middle of the week and Nazareth Fairgrounds had the Sunday night races,” Andretti explained recently. “We were staying at my uncle’s house and from the house you could see these lights and you could hear the roar of these engines.
“We said, ‘What’s that?’ and my uncle said, ‘Oh, it’s these crazy people down there.’
“Aldo (Mario’s brother) and I just bolted and we ran for the lights. It was a mile and a half or so away and we just ran and we peaked through the outside fence and they had all these modified stock cars all lined up there. They looked like real brutes. They certainly didn’t look like Formula One cars.
“I looked at Aldo and said, ‘sh--, we could do this.’”
And that was the beginning of the Andretti racing legacy.
In 1957, the brothers began building a modified and by 1959 they were ready to race.
“We were working in my uncle’s gas station after school and we were giving most of the money to the home, but keeping some and that’s how we got a stash on the side with four other buddies and by ’59 the car was ready to go,” Andretti explained. “We lied about our age. The editor of the Nazareth Key, Les Young, fudged our birthday on our driver’s license to make it like we were 21.”
That’s when part of the Andretti legend was born.
“We presented ourselves on March 27, 1959 at Jerry Free’s track and told them we were racing in Italy since we were 13. And that stayed with us, but it was a fib,” Andretti laughed. “Aldo won the coin toss to see who would drive and he started last in a heat race. Watching him gave me anxiety. One by one, he passed everybody and won the heat race and we couldn’t freaking believe it.
“Then, he won the feature,” Mario remembered, laughing like a kid on Christmas morning. “The very first race, he won the heat and the feature. We won $150. That’s how it all began. Then I did the same thing the following week.”
The car the brothers built was interesting and unique for those competing at the high-speed Nazareth dirt track.
“We did it because we did it with the Hudson,” he maintains. “We chose that Hudson because one of our buddies said there was no use doing the same thing everybody else was doing and trying to beat these guys that have been doing it for years.
“We tried to get information on the setups from guys like Herb Thomas that were running the Hudsons. It really worked for us. That’s how we got going and never looked back.”