PART 2

His Bathurst 1000 appearance ranks atop the top of unexpected outings, just as his call-up to drive for Jaguar, on its IMSA swansong in 1993 at the 24 Hours of Daytona, jumps out as one of Andretti’s finer and sneakier appearances.

Go back to his earliest days in the sport, and it’s all but impossible to draw a line from where he started to where he finished. John’s formative stages had little to do with sports cars and Indy car; he took a page from his father and uncle, rather than his cousin, and built his foundation in short track racing. From the Midwest to the Northeast to the west coast, Andretti popped up in the early 1980s as a sprint and midget driver. USAC and a mix of regional circle-track championships were his home. And his exploits on dirt weren’t reserved for the U.S.; Andretti’s talents were on display in Australia’s hardcore short-oval scene well before he raced at Bathurst.
There’s no shortage of Hall of Famers among the list of people that Andretti drove for during his career. Image by LAT

The Easter egg routine took root during John’s roundy-round era as an SCCA Super Vee race pops up – akin to today’s Indy Pro 2000 cars – and then there was an IMSA race or two in the second-tier GTP Lights class with an unheralded team. The old and oft-forgotten 1980s SCCA Can-Am series – a shell of its former self – also bears Andretti’s name at the even more forgotten Green Valley Raceway in Texas.

Returning to the John Andretti classics, 1987 stands out as another prime example of why he was beloved by so many people. BMW North America axed its glorious 1986 IMSA GTP program after a single season, despite John and Davy Jones taking a late and energizing win at the 500km Watkins Glen race. Without any serious offers coming his way, he made a bold decision to accept the only thing BMW had to give: a ride in a mostly stock M3 street car in IMSA’s production-based Firestone Firehawk series.

For the sake of comparison, it was like losing a full-time IndyCar ride and choosing to continue with the same manufacturer in go karts.

There was almost nothing lower on the pro-racing ladder for John to take, and yet, thanks to that unquenchable passion for driving, he signed up and had an almighty blast banging fenders and playing in a new form of racing. It’s such an obscure entry, you won’t readily find those Firehawk drives on his resume.

In the ultimate Easter egg season, we can’t forget 1993, so let John uncork just some of the things he raced and accomplished.

“Well that was a unique year, because basically, I was driving everything from go-karts to the Indy 500, to Daytona with the [NHRA] drag team, to the Indianapolis 500 with AJ [Foyt], to the Top Fuel car, to running my first NASCAR race, and who knows what else in between, but… oh yeah, I [also] set a land speed record on Bonneville Salt Flats,” he told me a few years ago.

Karts, the Indy 500 for Foyt where he finished 10th, his first Cup races for Tex Racing, breaking into the NHRA and beating defending Top Fuel champion Joe Amato in his first official round as a drag racer, plus… Bonneville!

And if 1993 wasn’t already rather ridiculous, Andretti drove in the final Moosehead Grand Prix, held on the streets of Halifax, Nova Scotia, in a Formula 3000 car. And finished eighth. At the Moosehead effing Grand Prix!

“Basically, I just took a year off and said, ‘I’m just going to have fun. I’m not going to sign a contract with anybody. I’m going to be a hired gun and I’m just going to go week by week and I’m going to decide where I’m going to race, and what weekends I’m going to race, and that’s what I did,” he said. “Not to sound spoiled or anything, but it was great.”
The Busby Porsche gets a workout around Del Mar in 1989. Andretti and Bob Wollek finished 12th. Image via Marshall Pruett Archives

Going back, I forgot that time in 1989 where he flew to Germany and did a one-off race in the Supercup series in a Porsche 962, and finished second on the cramped Norisring street course. And when he and cousin Michael shared Hendrick’s zillion-horsepower Corvette GTP car in 1988 at Mid-Ohio in the middle of John’s first season-long IndyCar campaign. And when he and former NASCAR teammate Kyle Petty turned up in a Porsche GT car and won their Grand-Am Rolex Series class at Watkins Glen in 2001.

And there’s more. With John Andretti, there’s always more. The Easter egg hunt might never end, and what does that say about the man?

We hail racing’s great utility players, the Foyts and Clarks, the Parnellis and Gurneys, the Hills – Phil and Graham – and the Marios, for blurring racing’s talent lines. As the legend goes, they’d race anything, anywhere, anytime. I’d like to propose we add a second Andretti to that list of all-timers. I bet a few of them would even blush a little bit after reading through John’s resume.

Asked if there was any form of racing he missed out on trying, we have yet another John Andretti classic to admire.

“I was scheduled to drive an unlimited hydroplane… I thought that it would be so cool to drive something like that,” he said as I shrieked and laughed. “It was going to happen. And then all of a sudden, one of those contractual things… I was going to quietly go off and do it, but it got [back] to the [NASCAR] team owner and he put a [stop] to it. I thought that would have been a lot of fun. Certainly differentiate myself from everyone else, that’s for sure.”

‘Differentiate himself.’ That’s the funniest line of all.

I’d offer that a big part of the outpouring of unprecedented love for Andretti in the week since his death has come in response to those efforts to race as often as possible in as many disciplines he could imagine. On dirt, on short ovals, street circuits, road courses, super speedways, drag strips, salt flats, and from Australia and back, how many racing series, and how many fans got to watch John Andretti pour his love for driving into a vehicle that brought crowds joy and memories?

He leaves behind large fan bases in seemingly every series on the planet.

“He’s one of those guys, that we, sadly, collectively as fans, really just took, and you hate to say it, but really just took the talent and took him for granted,” Kyle Petty said.

“But now, as you look at what he’s done, he’s like a Monet or a Picasso when you look back and you think, ‘oh my God’. You know what I mean?”

Yes, we do.

John Andretti, IMSA, IndyCar, Insights & Analysis