Aldo Andretti

It's been a bad couple years for the Andretti clan..

Bumped into him once at Road America and had to do a double take, even though his '69 crash in Des Moines required rebuilding his face... 

Condolences to the Andretti family.

Robin Miller wrote this for "Racer": https://racer.com/20...etti-1940-2020/

Mario's brother, Aldo, passed away yesterday evening. RIP

Sad news - R.I.P.

Sad news

Sorry to hear this 

Sad sad news.

Two 16-year-old Italian boys on the race track in Pennsylvania:

(Source)

Edited by ReWind, 02 January 2021 - 19:37.

Aldo left & Mario right? Pulling for Johnny Thomson to have better luck than in '55 - he did, and he didn't: first car out, but at least not onto his head. Still no rollover bar on the Schmidt=Kuzma, although three of the cars that day already had'em, the first ever to race at the Horne: those of National Champion Jimmy Bryan, Indy winner Pat Flaherty and track record holder Don Freeland, of all people.

Aldo Andretti was more than Mario's brother, he was a racing driver himself, and a better one at that than many of those who have been mourned in these pages over the years. Mario has been quoted many times as saying that Aldo was as good or even better than himself before his accident in the fall of 1959, but then again he would say that, wouldn't he? Many writers have repeated that sentiment, but is it true? I have long been wanting to take a closer look at that 1959 season of racing at the Nazareth Fairgrounds speedway to form my own opinion, and now that I finally did so, I can say with confidence: there's no evidence that Aldo was better than Mario in those early races, and not much that he was as good as his twin brother. In fact, all the evidence points to the fact that Mario was the faster, the more determined, the "first" Andretti right from the start. Although, to be perfectly honest, the data to form this opinion on is pretty thin, and that's another facet of my findings, in that much of what has been written about the early days of the Andretti saga is pretty far off the truth. Although it is true that Aldo won his very first (heat) race that he ever competed in, most of the year both Andretti boys were just bit players, and didn't figure very much in the results of the races. It just wasn't, "one week Aldo would win, and Mario the next" - not by a very long way!

So, even if Aldo wasn't as good as Mario, there's no shame in that, and he deserves to get a proper racer's obituary. Unfortunately for him, that can't be done without mentioning Mario many times, but I will try to focus on Aldo as much as possible. So, stay tuned for another lengthy multi-part essay about an American racer by yours truly

To regard Aldo merely as Mario’s sidekick doesn’t seem fair, especially in the light of evidence that he was such a fine human being, by all accounts. An article in the magazine Indianapolis Monthly from 2017 includes a nice miniature of life within the Andretti cosmos, illustrating that sentiment, and the differences between the twins, however minuscule they may have been, and it’s perhaps worth quoting the paragraph in full:

Around here [Aldo’s home], Mario is a beloved uncle and brother-in-law. But the family also refers to him, with a wink, as “the cocky one.” Corky [Aldo’s wife] compliments the grace Aldo has shown all these years, and insists his admiration for Mario is genuine. “People might assume that Aldo would be jealous, but that’s not Aldo,” she says. “Now if it had been the other way around …” The room erupts with laughter.

Now, we all know that you don’t become the Auto Racing Driver of the Century by being nice to all and sundry, but perhaps there’s more to the idea that the “identical” (monozygotic) twins weren’t so identical, after all. As it is, I, for one, am pretty confident I can tell them apart even in old childhood photographs (Can you? Make a test @ http://www.marioandr.../personal-album) – just look into their eyes, and Mario always seems to have that steely, intense look that you can see every so often in truly successful, or even only extraordinary ambitious people in all walks of life.

And, to be perfectly blunt, hadn’t Mario always been numero uno, even way back on February 28 of 1940, when he was born six hours before Aldo - quite a labour for their mother Rina to endure! Admittedly, modern psychology rejects the old theory of first-born dominance, but what do we actually know about that for certain? It may still have been an early form of the “competitive spirit” shining through… That said, at least Aldo did not dilly-dally too much and made sure that neither of the twins had to endure the ignominy of having to wait four years between birthday cakes! Other than that, however, there’s not much that we know about their respective lives as individuals during infancy in Montona (today: Motovun) on the Istrian peninsula (part of the historic region Venezia Giulia, and a ping-pong between regional powers for centuries), and the refugee camp in Lucca later on. Thus, it’s certainly tempting to surmise that, unless their identities were confused (accidentally or not) during childhood, like the twins in Gabriel García Márquez’s famous novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, their paths in life were already set from the beginning, no? Well, let’s give this question a fair trial, starting with a look at what exactly they were getting into in America during the spring of 1959.

Edited by Michael Ferner, 09 January 2021 - 11:06.

 (I restructured and rewrote my last post in this thread)

Sometimes, it’s of paramount importance to be in the right spot at the right time, and the Andrettis most certainly were. Not only that the town they landed in had a speedway – that wasn’t really unusual in the fifties: according to research done by Allan E. Brown (America’s Speedways, 2nd ed. 1994), there were more than 2,000 oval race tracks in the US active during that decade, more than at any other time in history. Better still, the Andrettis now lived in Pennsylvania, the all-time hotspot of US short track activity – according to Brown’s figures, again, the state ranks third behind the much more populous California and New York in total number of tracks during the first 100 years of the sport, but has as many as both these states combined when broken down per population! And if you break it down to the area covered per track, the only US state with a higher track density than Pennsylvania (other than the two mini states that are even smaller than Venezia Giulia) is New Jersey, a mere fifteen-minute drive to the east of Nazareth. Beats a seven-hour roundtrip from Lucca to Monza anytime!

Like most similar sites throughout the USA, Nazareth Fairgrounds saw infrequent motor racing action since the very beginning of the 20th century. That changed after WW2, when weekly stock car racing became an attraction on many existing tracks. Most of those had started out during the Midget craze in the thirties and forties, and were thus smaller in size – yet a full half-mile track was a special attraction for the stockers, and especially in Pennsylvania where a real subculture developed to make use of these bigger tracks, which allowed much more powerful and faster cars to compete. Stock car racing, back then, was not quite the same as we know it today, although the roots for that already existed in what was then called Late Model Stock car racing. But in general, Stock car racing in the forties and fifties meant highly tuned engines in cars salvaged from junk yards, and was formerly known as "jalopy" or "roadster" racing, often depending on locality. Over time, it became better known as Modified Stock car racing, then just Modified racing. And there were many, many different forms of it!

The most powerful and fastest Stock cars to race in Pennsylvania during the late fifties were usually called Modified Sportsmen, although there were no hard rules for the names, and similar cars were running in different areas of the US under different names, such as Coupesters, Skeeters or Full House cars, not least because sanctioning bodies (other than a few regional ones) avoided this form of racing, by and large. By the same token, there were no hard rules for the technical specifications of the cars, and sometimes it seemed that every track ran to its own rules. Over time, some of the "better" tracks (i.e. those with the fattest purses) created circuits which attracted owners and drivers willing to do some travel, although in general they usually stayed within a circle of a couple hundred miles, at best. Still, the whole mindset and procedure was not at all unlike the later "Outlaw" Sprint car movement in the seventies, and that's no accident: in Pennsylvania, for instance, the Moddified Sportsmen were the direct forerunners of the Super Modifieds in the mid sixties, which eventually evolved into the winged Super Sprints of the seventies, the backbone of the Outlaw circuit!

This whole setup of weekly racing made the local promoters the real power brokers in the sport, and some legendary figures started out during this era, like Earl Baltes of Eldora Speedway in Ohio, Hilly RIfe (Lincoln Speedway) or Jack Gunn (Williams Grove) in Pennsylvania. Nazareth Fairgrounds was promoted by Jerry Fried, who idiosyncratically prefered to be called the "producer" of racing at the fairgrounds. A former ballroom-dancing impresario from Bronx/NY, Fried (no relation, incidentally, to Irv Fried, longtime co-promoter at Langhorne and Yellow Hat Speedways) took over promotional duties at Nazareth in 1952, and ran it for almost four decades, sometimes in combination with other local tracks, wisely investing in the infrastructure of the track(s) as well as the competing racers. It all paid off very handsomely, and his was one of the best racing enterprises in the hugely competitive surroundings of the Pennsylvania/New York/New Jersey triangle, especially after switching his races to the Modified Sportsman class in 1956.

Sunday night racing shows at the fairgounds regularly attracted crowds that were as big or even bigger than the total population of the town of Nazareth (around 6,000), not least because the track was easily accessible from the urban area around the county seat Easton, the county's biggest city Bethlehem and Allentown, third largest city in the state, all of them within thirty minutes of the fairgrounds, and aggregating about a quarter of a million residents. Thus, Fried was able to advertize a guaranteed purse of more than $ 1,000 (at a time when even USAC Sprint car races sometimes paid less than $ 5,000), and attract teams and drivers from all over the Northeast; many of them competing on a circuit that also involved the half-mile fairgound tracks at Middletown/NY and Flemington/NJ, others racing at famous Pennsylvania venues like Reading or Williams Grove. By 1958, car counts of way over fifty were the norm, and to handle the demand by both competitors and spectators, Fried introduced Thursday night racing during the summer months, and a supporting class of "Strictly Stock" cars for novices and local low-budget racers, who got virtually trampled underfoot by the travelling Modified stars. Of course, Strictly Stock didn't really mean strictly stock - in reality, those cars were junk yard specials just the same, only cheaper and less powerful: in 1959, a Modified Sportsman typically lapped the Nazareth track in around 28 seconds (compared to 26 seonds by the "Class B" Sprint cars of the URC, which occasionally visited in the fifties and sixties), while the Strictly Stocks took around 30 seconds for a lap - still a fast pace, 60 miles per hour, and about the same speed that future Indy 500 starters like Billy Winn and Jimmy Patterson recorded when AAA Sprint cars visited Nazareth only thirty years earlier.

Edited by Michael Ferner, 16 January 2021 - 20:40.

Before going into more detail regarding the 1959 racing season at Nazareth, it is perhaps prudent to talk about the limitations of my research efforts. For starters, I won't lie - Stock cars are not really my "thing", so I don't have much general background information to fall back on, and it has been quite a bit of a challenge to get even some fairly basic stuff right - apologies in advance if I missed the goal here or there (corrections and additional info are very welcome!!). One thing, for example, which I was never able to establish is the difference in specification between Modified Sportsman and Strictly Stock cars, racing at the Nazareth Fairgrounds - my best guess at the moment is that V8 engines were probably banned from the Strictly Stock events, and that perhaps the Modifieds were allowed to shed more weight by stripping several parts of bodywork; however, I don't really know a thing about that. In general, the bulk of my information comes from period newspapers which, as a rule, ignored the technical aspects of Stock car racing altogether - not even the make of car was mentioned except for very rare circumstances! Amongst the papers I have had access to, the various issues of The Morning Call in Allentown/PA have provided the best and most regular coverage, usually printing previews and more or less detailed reports of every race. That said, their coverage improved considerably during the summer of 1960, meaning that information about the early events in which the Andrettis competed is not available in as much detail as I would have liked.(the later issues generally have the top five finishers of every heat and the main event in both classes of racing, although I'm missing the last three months of the 1960 volume and thus results of the final handful or so of races). Also, there's nothing in The Morning Call about Aldo's accident and recovery, but at least I do have one pretty comprehensive article from a paper in Pottstown/PA, about twenty miles west from Hatfield (where the accident happened) and Lansdale (where Aldo was hospitalized) - still, a "closer to home" report would've been preferable, alas, its absence may be seen as a sort of verdict on the situation in itself!

From time to time, I will be referring to the "Andretti legend", when dealing with information you can find in the various online and print media about the beginnings of the Andretti saga, and which, while not necessarily untrue, may be somewhat at odds with the findings of my research. It is my hope that the reader will be able to form his own opinion upon the evidence herein presented. And, while there will be one or two surprises (and not, unfortunately, all of them pleasant) about the life and times of the more prominent of the Andretti twins, the ultimate goal will be to track the auto racing career of Aldo Andretti, it should be remembered. Yet, at the very beginning, their doings and achievements were so much entwined that it is near impossible to credit one or the other with certain developments. For instance, building their first car, who took the initiative? Who was instrumental in deciding which way to go, and who built what, exactly? Maybe they really worked hand-in-glove on that, but common sense would suggest that perhaps one of them acted as the "leading light". It's easy enough to imagine they split the alleged $ 500 they spent on the engine, a Hudson Hornet six-cylinder they purchased from a company selling the surplus stock of former Hudson factory racer Marshall Teague, the AAA (Late Model) Stock car Champion of 1952 and '54, which they then put into the shell of a ten-year old Hudson Commodore. Adding a few other items, such as a stolen beer keg that served as the fuel tank, and - Presto! - ready was the brand new, red #7 for the Strictly Stock car races at Nazareth Fairgrounds!

Ah, yes, that's right - the Andrettis only ever competed in the supporting class of the weekly racing shows at Nazareth Fairgrounds, didn't you know? One of the things the Andretti legend never really reveals. So, technically at the very least, none of the Andrettis ever won a main or feature event at Nazareth in the strictest sense, perhaps they never even competed in one! True, the track management often ran a seperate "feature" for the Strictly Stock racers, mostly over a shorter distance but, whisper it quietly, the Andrettis didn't win any of those, either - not until the very last race of the 1959 season. On several occasions, such as when the URC Sprinters showed up for one of their four Nazareth stints during the year, or special appearances of "daredevil" shows (Joie Chitwood and others), the occasional motor cycle race or even only a Fourth-of-July fireworks, the second feature was struck from the programme, and the Strictly Stock cars ran only in one or two seperate heat races - whether some of them tagged on to the main even field, I don't know, but in any case they didn't feature in the results. As a sort of compensation, however, the nominal support act had the Thursday night shows to themselves, but still: no Andretti to be found in the list of winners - bummer, innit?

Unfortunately, though, the data I have collected is quite incomplete, especially when it comes to racing results of the Strictly Stock subdivision, so I will have to resort to boring you with a few statistics to drive my point home, namely that both Andrettis were merely bit players at Nazareth Fairgounds speedway races in 1959 - not to downplay their respective achievements, but to add a bit of perspective. And, to seize the opportunity to name some of the real stars of racing at Nazareth, like Otto Harwi from Easton, who won the track championship five years in a row, 1955 to '59 (period sources even credit him with a sixth title, in 1960, but a late eighties article in The Morning Call listed Bob Malzahn of Florida instead). Harwi wasn't a very prolific winner, but a regular top five finisher, which usually counts for more championship points in weekly racing, because promoters want their star drivers to show up as often as possible, which is why, for example, Harwi won the 1958 title with only two wins against Dick Tobias, leading member of a well known racing family from Lebanon in Central Pennsylvania, who won eleven of the eighteen main events that year, but skipped some shows to race elsewhere instead. By 1959, Harwi was concentrating almost entirely on Nazareth and Saturday night racing at Middletown/NY, where he was runner-up in points three years in a row before finally clinching that title in 1960, too. Other main event winners at Nazareth in 1959 included Ralph Smith of Maryland, Bill Deskovich, Sonny Strupp, Al Tasnady and Budd Olsen of New Jersey, Danny Mitchell of New York, as well as Ken Wismer and Jim Delaney from nearby towns in Pennsylvania.

Edited by Michael Ferner, 17 January 2021 - 13:00.

# Date d/n Day Laps Modified Sprtsmn Second            Third            Laps Strictly Stock   Second            Third
 
 0 Apr 19 d Sun -- Opening Day postponed - Track not ready
 1 Apr 26 d Sun 25 Ralph Smith       Danny Mitchell    Lauden Potts      --
 2 May  3 d Sun 25 Bill Deskovich    Ralph Smith       Russ Delp         --
 3 May 10 d Sun 25 Bob Malzahn       Bill Deskovich    Sonny Strupp      15 Herb Frenchko     Bill Butler       Aldo Andretti
 4 May 17 n Sun 25 Danny Mitchell    Sonny Strupp      Mitch Smith       15 Russ Ahner        Bobby Bottcher    George Dilworth
 5 May 24 n Sun 25 Sonny Strupp      Danny Mitchell    Bob Malzahn       --
 6 May 31 n Sun 25 Otto Harwi        Danny Mitchell    Jim Metzler       -- (URC Sprint cars)
 - Jun  4 n Thu --                                                       20 Russ Ahner        Bob Robinson      Doc Predmore
 7 Jun  7 n Sun 25 Al Tasnady        Budd Olsen        Sonny Strupp      ??
 - Jun 11 n Thu --                                                       20 Don Hughes        George Dilworth   Russ Ahner
 8 Jun 14 n Sun 25 Budd Olsen        Dick Tobias       Ken Wismer        ??
 - Jun 18 n Thu --                                                       20 Luther Muffley    Russ Ahner        Bobby Bottcher
 9 Jun 21 n Sun 25 Ken Wismer        Bob Malzahn       Al Tasnady
                25 Al Tasnady        Bill Deskovich    Will Cagle        -- (Twin Modified Feature)
 - Jun 25 n Thu --                                                       25 Luther Muffley    Russ Ahner        Walt Smith
10 Jun 28 n Sun 25 Al Tasnady        Otto Harwi        Dick Tobias       ??
 - Jul  2 n Thu --                                                       20 George Dilworth   Mario Andretti    Luther Muffley 
11 Jul  5 n Sun 25 Al Tasnady        Bob Malzahn       Dick Tobias       -- (URC Sprint cars)
 - Jul  9 n Thu --                                                       20 Don Hughes        Russ Ahner        Bill Butler
12 Jul 12 n Sun 25 Bob Malzahn       Herb Tillman      Dick Tobias       -- (Jack Kochman Hell Drivers)
 - Jul 16 n Thu --                                                       20 Russ Ahner        Don Hughes        Luther Muffley
13 Jul 19 n Sun  0 (RAIN)                                                 0 (RAIN)
 - Jul 23 n Thu --                                                        0 (RAIN)
13 Jul 26 n Sun 25 Otto Harwi        Les Farley        Sonny Strupp      20 Luther Muffley    Russ Ahner        Don Hughes
 - Jul 30 n Thu --                                                       ??
14 Aug  2 n Sun 50 Jim Delaney       Dick Tobias       Bob Malzahn       -- (Mid-Season Championship)
 - Aug  6 n Thu --                                                       20 Don Hughes        Luther Muffley    Russ Ahner
15 Aug  9 n Sun  0 (RAIN)                                                 0 (RAIN)
 - Aug 13 n Thu --                                                       20 Russ Ahner        Don Hughes        Luther Muffley
15 Aug 16 n Sun  0 (RAIN after heats, feature run Aug 30)                -- (URC Sprint cars)
 - Aug 20 n Thu --                                                       20 Bobby Bottcher    Tom Rooney        Russ Ahner
15 Aug 23 n Sun  0 (RAIN)                                                 0 (RAIN)
 - Aug 27 n Thu --                                                        0 (RAIN after heats)
15 Aug 30 n Sun 25 Bob Malzahn       Les Farley        Ken Wismer        -- (make-up feature for Aug 16)
16               0 (RAIN)                                                --
 - Sep  3 n Thu --                                                       35 Luther Muffley    Herb Frenchko     Mario Andretti
16 Sep  6 n Sun 25 Sonny Strupp      Otto Harwi        Bob Rossell       -- (URC Sprint cars)
17 Sep 13 n Sun 50 Dick Tobias       Otto Harwi                          -- (fireworks)
18 Sep 20 n Sun 25 Otto Harwi        Jackie McLaughlin Dick Tobias       ??
19 Sep 27 d Sun 25 Bob Malzahn                                           25 Mario Andretti

                                       Main Event &     Heat results
   Modified Sportsman division         1  2  3  4  5    1  2  3  4  5

 1 Otto Harwi        Easton/PA         3  3  -  4  1    2  6  3  3  –
   Bob Malzahn       Kingsbury/NJ*     4  2  2  -  2    3  2  4  4  -
   Al Tasnady        Vineland/NJ       4  -  1  -  -    5  -  -  -  -
   Sonny Strupp      S. Plainfield/NJ  2  1  3  1  -    6  5  5  2  4
   Danny Mitchell    Middletown/NY     1  3  -  -  -    3  1  -  -  1
   Dick Tobias       Lebanon/PA        1  2  4  1  -    6  2  2  2  1
   Bill Deskovich    Hanover/NJ        1  2  -  1  1    6  3  2  -  1
   Budd Olsen        Paulsboro/NJ      1  1  -  1  1    2  1  -  -  -
   Ralph Smith       Aberdeen/MD       1  1  -  -  -    1  -  -  -  1
   Ken Wismer        Riegelsville/PA   1  -  2  2  3    2  4  3  1  -
   Jim Delaney       Easton/PA         1  -  -  1  -    -  1  1  2  –
   Les Farley        Califon/NJ        -  2  -  -  -    5  5  3  1  1
   Jackie McLaughlin Thorofare/NJ      -  1  -  -  -    3  –  1  1  1
   Herb Tillman      Hollywood/FL      -  1  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Will Cagle        Tampa/FL          -  -  1  1  -    -  -  2  -  -
   Russ Delp         Temple/PA         -  -  1  -  4    3  3  3  -  -
   Jim Metzler       Pottersville/NJ   -  -  1  -  -    1  2  3  2  1
   Mitch Smith       Harrisburg/PA     -  -  1  -  -    -  -  3  -  1
   Bob Rossell       New Egypt/NJ      -  -  1  -  -    -  -  -  1  1
   Lauden Potts      Orwigsburg/PA     -  -  1  -  -    -  -  -  1  –
   Carl van Horn     Belvidere/NJ      -  -  -  4  1    3  3  4  4  2
   Harry Charles     Easton/PA         -  -  -  1  -    -  -  1  2  3
   Reds Kagle        Greenbelt/MD      -  -  -  -  1    2  2  -  -  -
   Dave Rapp         Easton/PA         -  -  -  -  1    2  1  -  1  -
   Reggie Montrose   McAfee/NJ         -  -  -  -  1    -  -  1  1  1
   Bill de Coster    Basking Ridge/NJ  -  -  -  -  -    1  3  2  1  1
   Chet Jones        Wharton/NJ        -  -  -  -  -    1  1  -  1  -
   Art Scott         Chester/NJ        -  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  1  3
   Duke Southern     White Plains/NY   -  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  1  –
   Lee Hendrickson   Lawrenceville/NJ  -  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  -  -
   Fred Fehr         Easton/PA         -  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  -  -
   Blackie Reider    Reading/PA        -  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  -  -
   Bill Wark         Barrington/NJ     -  -  -  -  -    -  1  1  2  1
   Ed Farley         Califon/NJ        -  -  -  -  -    -  1  1  1  2
   Leroy Felty       Jonestown/PA      -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  1  -
   Larry Bowers      Hampton/NJ        -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  1  -
   Warren Mutter     Boyertown/PA      -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  1
   Charlie South     McAfee/NJ         -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Johnny Dubendorf  Lewistown/PA      -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   George Horvath    Kearney/NJ        -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Joe Romer                           -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Jack Bergstresser Phillipsburg/NJ   -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Scotty Cameron    Arlington/VA      -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Tony Russo        Riverside/NJ      -  -  -  -  -    -  -  3  1  -
   Richie Kolka      New York City/NY  -  -  -  -  -    -  -  2  -  -
   Whip Mulligan     Denville/NJ       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  2  1
   D. D. Harris      Greenville/NC     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  2  –
   Vince Conrad      Kutztown/PA       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Walt Shoppe       Philadelphia/PA   -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Freddy Adam       Kutztown/PA       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   ? Cervasco                          -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Hoop Schaible     Upper Black Eddy  -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  2  2
   Frankie Schneider Lambertville/NJ   -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  1
   Bob Hall          Flemington/NJ     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  –
   Elton Hildreth    Bridgeton/NJ      -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  –
   Steve Elias       Merchantville/NJ  -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  –
   Jack Reilly                         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  –
   Bob Courtwright   Butler/NJ         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  -
   Smokey Dengler    Reading/PA        -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  -
   Frank Geraghty    Paterson/NJ       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  2
   George Harrison                     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Ernie Gahan                         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1

   Strictly Stock division

   Russ Ahner        Lehighton/PA      4  4  3  -  -    -  -  -  -  -
   Luther Muffley    Lehighton/PA      4  1  3  2  -    2  -  1  -  -
   Don Hughes        Flemington/NJ     3  2  1  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
=> Mario Andretti    Nazareth/PA       1  1  1  2  -    -  -  -  -  - <=
   George Dilworth   North Wales/PA    1  1  1  1  1    -  1  -  -  -
   Bobby Bottcher    Lehighton/PA      1  1  1  -  -    -  -  -  -  -
   Herb Frenchko     Easton/PA         1  1  -  1  -    1  –  2  -  -
   Bill Butler       Milford/NJ        -  1  1  -  -    -  1  -  1  -
   Bob Robinson      Lebanon/NJ        -  1  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  1
   Tom Rooney        Allentown/PA      -  1  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  -
=> Aldo Andretti     Nazareth/PA       -  -  1  1  -    3  -  -  -  - <=
   Walt Smith        Allentown/PA      -  -  1  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Doc Predmore      McAfee/NJ         -  -  1  -  -    -  -  -  -  -
   Bob Smith         Lebanon/NJ        -  -  -  1  -    -  1  -  1  –
   Ward Crozier      Easton/PA         -  -  -  1  -    -  -  -  -  -
   Leo Livengood     Walnutport/PA     -  -  -  -  2    -  -  -  -  -
   Don Laubach       Hecktown/PA       -  -  -  -  1    -  -  -  -  -
   Al Neidlinger     Center Valley/PA  -  -  -  -  -    1  1  -  -  -
   Charlie Bowers    Alburtis/PA       -  -  -  -  -    1  –  1  -  -
   Zorro Engler      Easton/PA         -  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  -  -
   John Bright       Hellertown/PA     -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Whitey Kempker                      -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Chuck Henshaw     Bloomsbury/NJ     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  1

* Malzahn was from Hollywood/FL, originally, but raced out of New Jersey at the time

Edited by Michael Ferner, 24 January 2021 - 09:46.

After one of the longest run-ins to a TNF thread ever , we are now ready to leave the somewhat mundane world of facts and figures behind, and start the proper appraisal of Aldo Andretti's career. Let's just first pause for a moment and reflect again upon the story many of us, I'm sure, have heard or read over and over again, namely that the brothers flipped a coin to decide who was to drive the first race, with Aldo winning the toss, his heat and the feature on his very first attempt, then Mario doing the same the next week, and the twins subsequently alternating in obliterating the opposition; and also Mario's self-effacing claims that Aldo was as good if not better than him in the beginning. Well, even those of you who couldn't be bothered into reading the whole sermon can now, with a quick glance at the statistics, acknowledge the fact that this entire "Andretti legend" business needs to be taken with a grain of salt - better still, a whole jug of the stuff! - which, in turn, will help us to better understand a few of the happenings we are about to unravel. When all is said and done, it is probably fair to say that both Andrettis had a reasonable, even promising rookie year, but unfortunately (!) they weren't nearly as successful as the legend would have us believe, which makes it kind of difficult to make a qualified judgement. Aldo's three heat wins, for instance, look mighty good, until you realize that several dozens of heat results are missing from the table because the information was simply not available. Overall, though, it is my belief that the above statistics give a fair and proper impression of how the season evolved; and anyway: it looks like this is all we are going to get.
 
Now, whether that coin toss ever happened, I can't say (it certainly makes for a good story!), but what I can confirm is that Aldo really did win his very first heat race, yet not the feature because there was none for the Strictly Stock cars on Opening Day in 1959. The reason for that probably lay in the fact that the field was pretty short that early in the racing season - I don't have car counts for every meeting, but those I do have suggest this to have been the case: 48 cars were in the pits on Opening Day, and 51 the next week, which sounds pretty good until you learn that by the fourth meeting, the opening of the night racing season, no fewer than 78 cars signed in, and several of the Thursday night shows during summer attracted way over 60 cars of the Strictly Stock category alone! Thin field or not, a win is a win, and better still, Aldo won another heat the very next Sunday, and then a third one during the third week of racing - oh, wait, how's that possible? Aren't we told that the Andrettis alternated behind the wheel of their Hudson, week after week? So, shouldn't that have been Mario winning the second heat at meeting #2, on May 3, instead of Aldo? Maybe, I don't know, but what I do know is that, while Aldo's name got plenty of ink in The Morning Call and other local papers right from the start of the season, Mario's was never mentioned until he finished fourth in the June 18 feature, two months later! So, how's that?
 
Basically, there are two ways to explain this apparent discrepancy: one, the period sources confused Mario with Aldo on the occasions when the former was driving, or two, it was indeed Aldo racing the Hudson in all of the early events, contrary to the Andretti legend! Both explanations can be divided still into subsets, like: if it was always Aldo in the car, was that by prior arrangement (with or without coin toss), or did they change plans after Aldo's unexpected (?) initial success? And, if one was confused with the other by race officials and/or the press at the time, was that by accident or subterfuge? Well, perhaps subterfuge is too strong a word for it, maybe they just gypped them to keep things smooth and easy, or maybe even only for the heck of it? Allegedly, they had to forge their ID to be able to race as minors, could that have been a motive for the apparent trickery (it's much easier to forge only one document instead of two)? Not likely, in my opinion: though USAC apparently still enforced a minimum age of 21 at the time, other (mostly local) organizations appear to have been much more lenient in that. Incidentally, both Andrettis were mentioned in seperate newspaper items during the following winter for non-racing incidents (of which more anon), and both times their age was correctly given as 19, so minority doesn't seem to have been much of an obstacle. It's actually pretty difficult to see how they could have played on their identities intentionally, especially when it required "the cocky one" to take a back seat!
 
And further, how likely is it that the twins were confused accidentally in that small town environment, when the fact that they were the only actual townsmen racing competitively at Nazareth made them instant celebrities at the track (look at the list of hometowns in the second table of the last post - while it's always good to cheer on a track champion from nearby Easton, nothing beats a REAL local mixing it with the boys!). In fact, Aldo seems to have been instantly adopted as the fan's choice, and even later in summer (when Mario was already mentioned alongside him), it was remarked that Aldo had the "largest fan club" at the track supporting him. No, there's little doubt in my mind that it was Aldo who took those early chequered flags, and I find myself questioning whether they ever really intended to share the driving duties of the Hudson! Sure enough, there's not a shred of evidence in the period sources about such an arrangement, and the fact that both names were listed alongside each other in all the race previews following that June 18 event seems to suggest that they competed against each other fairly regularly. Could it be that Mario believed in himself so much that he let Aldo drive the Hudson, while he roamed the pit lane, speaking to other car owners? Knowing what we know today, it wouldn't surprise me one bit...
 
For Aldo, though, things went decidedly pear-shaped the moment he took third place in the first feature for the Strictly Stock cars on May 10, as I couldn't find any other results for him until he took fourth in the final Thursday night show, nearly four months later. All the while, Mario's career was in the ascendant, and nothing illustrates that better than the fact that all the newspapers that I have seen always, and without fail, refer to "Aldo and Mario" when mentioning the brothers through July, and with the same consistency to "Mario and Aldo" from August onwards! There's no escaping the feeling that, having gotten off to a particularly fine start against comparatively "weak" opposition, Aldo slipped progressively backwards once additional talent, notably the Lehighton "squad" of Russ Ahner, Luther Muffley and Bobby Bottcher, entered into the contests - to say nothing of his own brother! Speaking of Lehighton, a town much the same size as Nazareth in a more rural area 25 miles to the west, where the Lehighton Stock Car Racing Association staged weekly shows at their own, dirt quarter-mile Mahoning Speedway just outside of town, on Sunday afternoons since 1957 (asphalted in 1970, the track is still active today as the Mahoning Valley Speedway) - several LSCRA members raced there merely hours before heading east for the Sunday night shows at Nazareth. During late summer of 1959, Mahoning adopted a Saturday night schedule for a few weeks, and on August 22 Mario Andretti competed there, beating all the local aces and scoring his first ever feature win, Though I have found pretty comprehensive results for most Mahoning races, the name Andretti does not appear again, so it may have been a one-off, but it raises the question whether the brothers competed elsewhere in 1959 - according to my research, there were at least two other occasions.

The famous Flemington Fairgounds track in New Jersey, less than an hour's drive from Nazareth in the general direction of New York City, where NASCAR sanctioned weekly Modified Sportsman races on Saturday nights for more than a decade, frequently scheduled "novice" races, likely along Nazareth Strictly Stock car lines, and on May 23 Aldo Andretti won a 21-car "rookie" race there, supposedly a "wild affair that had to be halted six times because of crack-ups" - another early season success for Aldo, and not a hollow one, in fact perhaps his best of the year, because runner-up was a local by the name of Ronnie Schomp, a multiple winner in this sort of races in 1958 already (so, hardly a novice or rookie!). Again, I couldn't find any evidence of the Andrettis competing there again, but interestingly, only a week before Aldo's appearance, a certain Pedro Rodríguez was performing "honorary starter" duties at Flemington, as he visited the track along with his father and brother Ricardo on the eve of a NASCAR Grand National appearance at Trenton Speedway - wouldn't it have been nice if Mario was there to meet his future NART Ferrari team mate? The other verified out-of-town appearance of the Andrettis happened also on a Saturday night, October 3 - that fateful night at Hatfield Speedway, 40 miles south of Nazareth going towards Philadelphia.

Edited by Michael Ferner, 16 January 2021 - 20:50.

Article by Nathan Brown in the Indianapolis Star, Jan 08, 2021:

Mario Andretti remembers his twin brother Aldo, a cheerleader in a family of racers

 

Maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason only one of the twin Italian-born Andretti brothers made a lengthy splash in the racing world.

It’s a twist to the family’s story we’ll never quite understand – why the boys who dressed the same and shared the top mattress of a bunk bed in an Italian refugee camp, who had to share the same bike, and eventually the same car, who traded days on and off working at the local Nazareth, Pennsylvania, gas station to help pay for auto parts to try to build their very own racecar from scratch, why they had to share the glory of just one star-studded racing career.

Maybe the record books couldn’t have handled them both. Maybe there wouldn’t have ever been enough ink. Maybe God was taking it easy on the rest of the field, because two Andretti twins for 30-plus years, their careers running in tandem all the way to the end, would have simply been unfair.

Mario Andretti sure doesn’t understand it. The 80-year-old, who famously won the 1969 Indy 500 to go along with four open-wheel championships, will never fully grasp why he, a man who’s been asked far too many times about the “Andretti Curse,” came out the lucky one in he and twin brother Aldo’s game of Life.

But the more Mario talks, stumbling upon one memory after another days after Aldo passed away Dec. 30 due to complications from COVID-19, the more you can start to piece it together yourself.

Who else would have been there standing in the infield near the end of Turn 3 in Trenton back in 1964, the day of Mario’s first USAC race? That afternoon, Mario had tasked his brother, younger by six hours, to serve as a marker for high-level open-wheel racing’s newest neophyte on when to back off on the gas. In those days, practice, qualifying and racing flew by in just a single day, so the elder Andretti couldn’t waste any time getting up to speed.
“Stand just past the big tree,” Mario asked of Aldo. “Stand where the top guys are backing off, so I can work up to it.”

But that first practice lap, well before Mario reached his brother, his nerves caught him, and he took his foot off far too swiftly, and he spun.

“After practice, I asked him, ‘What the hell were you doing? Are you trying to kill me? I thought you were going to stand where all the top guys were easing up, and I could go just a bit less…but you were all the way down there!’”

Mario points, exasperated.

Calm and level-headed, Aldo replied. “If you’re going to beat them, you’ve got to go deeper than they do.”

The racer of the two would go on to finish outside the top-10 that weekend, but maybe a seed was planted that weekend. Mario would go on to finish second at Trenton a year later, followed by third in the Indy 500 in 1965, sparking his first USAC title run.

“He was a true cheerleader,” Mario told IndyStar this week. “I think he felt the same satisfaction I was having with my own success, and I knew how much he wanted it, even though he never had the chance.

“I was the luckier one, for sure, but there was never this, ‘Oh gosh, why not me?’ type of thing, never ever, ever, ever, ever made you feel like he was a victim, and that’s something that spoke so loudly to me throughout my life.”

If you watched only that first year of the Andrettis’ racing career, spending most of it squinting from the bleachers trying to make out which one got to man the Hudson Hornet and strap on the pair’s lone helmet that weekend, you might have been surprised that both young men weren’t on-track in Trenton that April in 1964.

As the legend goes, on a spring race day in 1959 at Nazareth Speedway, neither one woke up knowing if it would be their first chance at stardom. After rolling the red stock car onto the track, both boys, donning zippered race suits that put the elder men in T-shirts to shame, Mario pulled a nickel out of his pocket. Aldo won the toss, took over the lead from the back of the field of 20 three laps into that initial heat race and would win the day’s feature race and its $80 grand prize a few hours later.

“All the sudden that following weekend, the onus was on me to do the same,” Mario said. Like their daily shifts at the local Sunoco, the boys traded the roles of driver and cheerleader that summer, combining for more than a dozen victories that summer. In the years that followed, there’s hardly ever been a major open-wheel race weekend in the United States without an Andretti in the cockpit.

But two, that’s where the trouble started. The brothers both earned entry into that season’s finale at Hatfield Speedway in August – Aldo in the boys’ shared car, Mario borrowing a ride. And it was that day, with Mario in the stands with the boys’ future wives Dee Ann Hock and Corky Stofflet watching Aldo’s heat race, when the younger of the twins steered too high, a victim of that same aggression he would try to teach Mario years later in Trenton. All of a sudden, Mario saw his brother flipping end over end, the roof of the Hornet collapsing, splitting open his brother’s helmet and leaving him unconscious.

He was taken to the local hospital in a coma. Mario remembers listening while Aldo was read his last rites.

Aldo would recover, but he was never the same on-track. His brother has often said Aldo was “half a lap slower” after that in the sprint cars he would go on to race for 10 more years.

Eventually, after an equally horrific crash in Des Moines 10 years later that left Aldo “unrecognizable,” he heeded his brother’s wishes and hung up his helmet.

If it had to be one of them, Mario surmises maybe it’s best it was Aldo, even as it crushed Mario to feel so helpless at the time, unable to give his beyond-deserving brother that dream they had spoken of in hushed whispers at night before drifting off to sleep as they grew up in a refugee camp.

Mario would give his brother the world if he could – even buying him a Firestone store on Crawfordsville Road just blocks away from IMS not long after Aldo gave up racing, to keep him busy and not far from the racing scene. But he couldn’t give Aldo his career back, and Mario wonders now, had the roles been flipped, if he would have been able to be as fervent a cheerleader for Aldo, whether he could have kept jealousy at bay.

“I was the one that ended up feeling all the guilt. I was always thinking, ‘Why am I so fortunate?’” Mario said. “But then it always made me feel happy when he was out there, just unconditionally supporting me.

“His response was always, ‘What’s the alternative, for me to just be miserable?’ And that taught me a lot. I don’t know if I would have been able to be as gallant.”

And so there they lived in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, Mario the fierce champion and Aldo the energy, together an almost unmatched racing superpower delivered to the world Feb. 28, 1940.

In retirement, they lived apart – Mario clinging to their boyhood stomping grounds of Nazareth and Aldo adopting the family’s second home of Indianapolis. Dec. 7, the elder arrived from out of town for his annual driving physical and dropped in on Aldo for what would be their final shared laughs. COVID-19 came on quickly, hitting Corky, too, but sending her home from the hospital soon after. Aldo stayed, making a point to FaceTime his brother every day until his last.

Mario sees solace only in the fact that the one time he saw his brother lose his spirit was in the passing of Aldo’s son, John, to colon cancer last January. The father was forced to watch his son drift away slowly for years, a father’s unrelenting joy and positivity unable to cast the family’s latest battle back into the darkness.

“I don’t think I ever saw Aldo mourn like he did after losing John,” he said. “He felt so helpless.”

And now, Mario knows, two of the family’s lifelong drivers at heart are up together, tearing around Heaven’s version of Nazareth to make up for races, as spectators and drivers alike, life stole from them.

Mario just wishes he could watch. He’d do anything to scream in the stands for his brother again. But in these times of despair, too, he misses his cheerleader now more than ever.

“Clearly, half of me is definitely gone with him,” Mario said, his voice that rambles with the speed of a combustion engine pitter-pattering to a pause. “When you lose someone like that, things will never be the same. It’s tough, that’s all I can say. It’s sad.

“Being a twin? I don’t know anything else.”

Thank you, Reinhard. It's heart warming to read of Mario's love for his brother between the lines. Also, I'll adopt the word "legend" from this article - so much better than "Andretti myth"

Aldo got a very appropriate racer's send-off with a lap at Indy:

https://www.indystar...ims/6603121002/

Article by Nathan Brown in the Indianapolis Star, Jan 08, 2021:

I remember years ago Mario telling this story but couldn't quite remember the details. I was thinking of posting here for anyone that could relate it; you have saved me the trouble. Thanks so much for sharing that with us.

It has been a very sad year for Mario and family.

Vince H.

Hatfield Speedway was better known as the Montgomery County Fairgrounds pre-war when it held semi-regular race meetings for Sprint cars on its half-mile dirt track for all kinds of sanctioning clubs, including the occasional AAA show. Drivers like Russ Snowberger, Jimmy Gleason or Freddie Winnai were early track record holders, and post-war the list of main event winners included names like Tommy Hinnershitz, Mike Magill, Jimmy Bryan, Ernie McCoy and Joe Sostilio. Midget racing was also very popular at the track, with drivers like Bill Schindler and Len Duncan doing lots of the winning, and by the fifties the inevitable Stock cars put on weekly shows at Hatfield, promoted by Joie Chitwood. In 1954, the former Sprint car, Midget and Stock car driver George Marshman took over the promotion of the storied track and instigated a $ 65,000 facelift for the plant which included a new asphalt surface, banking for the turns and an expanded seating capacity of 7,000 – in a town with a population of less than 2,000! To recoup expenses, the overhauled venue (now known as the Hatfield Hi-Speedway) staged an even more ambitious and varied racing programme over the next five years, and in 1959 featured a regular menu of ARDC Midgets on Friday nights as well as a two-tier Stock car show on Saturday nights, similar to Nazareth’s twin bill. At Hatfield, though, the top class was called “Racing Stocks”, and was sanctioned by the local All-Star Racing Club, while the subdivision (sanctioned by the Bell Stock Car Racing Club, and popularly known as the “Non-Fords”) was for 1954 models or older with a maximum of 6 cylinders excluding, however, cars of the Dearborn manufacturer – in other words, tailormade for the Andrettis! Additionally, the enterprising Marshman had built a new one-third-of-a-mile dirt track inside of the asphalt oval, which was eventually abandoned midway through the ’59 season, and it was on this new track that the big season finale was about to be staged on October 3: a 50-lap main event for the All-Star Racing Stocks, and a 30-lap feature for the Bell Club Non-Fords. Incidentally, today George Marshman is better known as the father of Bobby Marshman, who right at that time was preparing for his big-time debut in a USAC Sprinter at Williams Grove just a week hence – his 8th place finish there was to be the start to a meteoric, if tragic career at the very top of his profession.
 
Unfortunately for the researcher, newspapers follow their own beat when it comes to coverage of events, and while the speedway management clearly felt they were making a big splash with their season finale, the local press thought otherwise and ignored the meeting, by and large. All I could find was the shortest of articles in the Pottstown Mercury, giving the first three finishers of the All-Star race, and nothing else – no mention of the accident, nothing of the Bell Club race at all. Two days later, a somewhat longer article appeared, titled “Driver Injured At Hatfield Oval ‘Much’ Improved”.

LANSDALE – Aldo Andretti, Nazareth modified stock car racer injured at Hatfield speedway Saturday night, was reported as “slightly improved” at North Penn hospital here last night. Andretti was injured when he suddenly “lost” his car during the feature race. The mount cartwheeled several times as he ran all alone down the backstretch. He was removed to North Penn hospital, where his neck was placed in traction. He remained unconscious Sunday and Monday, and at the time the extent of his injuries was not fully known.

Rumors circulated that Andretti had died enroute to the hospital, and continued to gain momentum yesterday. A BROKEN neck was feared until yesterday, when Andretti regained consciousness. George Marshman, Hatfield promoter, said last night however, that Andretti was “much improved.” “There wasn’t a mark or bruise on him,” said Marshman. A check with hospital authorities failed to shed any light on the extent of Andretti’s injuries. Two unnamed youths struck by a wheel from the wrecked auto, were treated and released at the same hospital Saturday night.

And that's it - nothing more could be found about the accident, the extent of Aldo's injuries or about his well being, not in the Pottstown Mercury nor in Central News-Herald of Perkasie/PA (eight miles north of Hatfield), which occasionally covered the Hatfield races in some detail. Nothing at all in The Morning Call! Comparing this to the outright glee with which many motor racing accidents in period were reported in the press, this feels somewhat odd. Make no mistake, any accident which knocks a person out cold is potentially life threatening, but other than that, Aldo seems to have come off rather lightly.
 
Human memory is a strange thing. It has the power to stretch time, or to contract it. It can mix up events that were never connected in the first place, and it can pull things apart to never again be thought of as one - perhaps that's the most important function for human beings to survive in sanity, namely the ability to forget unpleasant things of the past, to make them simply disappear. I have seen several accounts of Aldo's accident and its aftermath, and to various degrees, they have all overstated the time Aldo remained unconscious, stayed in hospital, or took to fully recuperate. In many ways, that's not surprising - when his mother, for example, is quoted as saying that it was weeks rather than days before he woke up again, that can easily be understood in the circumstances - it must have felt that way! But, I have also seen exaggerated stories from emotionally unconnected people where twelve weeks were claimed, when in reality it had been only two days and change. Perhaps it's human nature to overstate things, how else can you explain? The same goes for his recovery, I have seen it mentioned that he couldn't even walk for most of the following year. Well, I don't know about that, but we have a reliable witness that he could drive again by February - a police report, as quoted in The Morning Call, mentioned Aldo as an innocent participant in a car accident on an icy road some ten miles north of Nazareth. All that doesn't really explain away his injuries, but it once again reminds us of the jug of salt we are supposed to keep handy when reading of the Andretti legend.

And yes, there’s more: ever wondered about the story how Gigi, the father of the twins, didn’t know about their racing until he saw Aldo in hospital, and the subsequent beating he’s supposed to have administered to Mario? How’s that even possible, the language barrier notwithstanding! Even if he couldn’t read the papers himself, surely he can’t have been that isolated to know nothing of his own name appearing in print, week after week. And his sons being away every Sunday night, and coming home smeared with oil and dirt, even the odd cut on the face or arm from a rock on the track, how do you explain that to your dad without him wising up? That simply doesn't ring true, if you ask me. I believe the beating was real, though, but the explanation, the whole connection with Aldo’s accident was probably “manufactured”, in a sense, as a means to deal with something else, far more awful, an experience that must have been extremely unpleasant for the entire family, and to "make that go away". It was a truly heinous thing Mario was accused and convicted of, together with his best buddy Billy Tanzosh, and which was reported in several local papers over a period of a full month that same winter. I will spare you the details, but for those of you with an inquisitive mind (and a strong stomach, it is recommended!), you can google the words "Andretti Tanzosh Gasoline Cat" - the way these things work, I can't be sure whether everyone gets the same results, but you should be able to find a link to a story by The Morning Call, although you probably still need a subscription to read the full article. Anyway, the link preview will give you the salient facts. Suffice it to say, if a young driver did something like that today, his career would be finished immediately - you can argue about "cancel culture" all you want, and yes, it would've been sad if we'd been deprived of watching Mario's career unfold over the decades, but if it helps avoiding such awful behaviour, I can't help but being all for it. And if Gigi was only half a man, he beat the living crap out of his son for it, I'm sure.

Edited by Michael Ferner, 17 January 2021 - 16:27.

Looking into the past is almost as difficult as looking into the future, can you believe that? Let's make a test, or two. This fairly well known photograph supposedly shows the "dirty half dozen" who built the Hudson Commodore/Hornet hybrid in 1959, apparently outside of uncle Lou Messenlehner's Sunoco gas station, just across the street from the fairgrounds speedway in Nazareth, where the twins often worked after school to earn the money that went into the racer. Can you point out the second most successful racing driver in this picture? No, don't go looking for the eyes that (don't) have it, the answer is actually much more simple: it's the guy at the very back, second from left, and his name is Billy Tanzosh. Billy was the same age as the twins, and lived about a mile from the Andretti home in South Market Street - just head north and turn left at the next junction, into Belvidere Street which, as you cross Main Street, becomes Mauch Chunk Street, named after the little town just west of Lehighton which had changed its name to "Jim Thorpe" a few years earlier - Thorpe was a Native American athlete who starred in a wide range of sports, and would be voted "The Greatest Athlete of the Twentieth Century" by more than half of the participants in an online poll of US sports fans in the year 2000, but who during his waning years suffered from alcoholism and poverty, so much that his destitute widow was forced to sell his corpse to the good people of Mauch Chunk, who erected a monument and a marker at his tomb, even though Thorpe apparently never set foot in the town. Now, trying to look into the future from a 1959 perspective, which street was more likely to be renamed in the next ten years, Mauch Chunk Street or Market Street? All answers postmarked before Memorial Day 1969 will be considered...

Billy's father was Frank J. Tanzosh junior, a building contractor, who sponsored a couple of cars for the Strictly Stock division races at Nazareth Speedway, and in 1960 the Tanzosh team, consisting of son Billy and Mario Andretti, dominated the class almost at will, winning more than half of the races. At one time during the summer, the team won eight features in a row -- now, wait a minute: isn't that pretty much what the Andretti legend is trying to make us believe about Aldo and Mario in 1959? Seems like just another trick that memory played on Mario, when he remembered winning race after race with his team mate, many years later - only that the team mate wasn't brother Aldo, but buddy Billy instead! Also remarkable is, that it was the "rookie" Tanzosh who won the first four of that run of eight straight in July, with Mario "merely repeating the trick" in August - how good a racing driver was Billy Tanzosh, really? Granted, it may have been some sort of Lance Stroll effect - it certainly can't have hurt being the boss's boy - but in any case, few of Mario's future team mates can boast of a better record against the Driver of the Century!

Then there's the matter of the money the kids made racing at Nazareth - I've seen endlessly inflated claims, like Aldo winning $ 80 for his debut heat race win, and the twins making more than $ 250 in the first two weeks of racing alone - with the total purse of a weekly show at Nazareth reported as $ 1,200 at 1959's opening day, you can do the math, and it most certainly doesn't add up. What I can believe is that a heat race paid, perhaps, eight dollars for the winner, and I can also see Mario making about $ 100 weekly during most of the 1960 season - that would still be a hell of a lot more than he can have made at uncle Lou's Sunoco station, which must have been playing on his mind a lot that fall. Unlike his buddy and team mate who could look forward to a secure and well paid job in a well established business in the future, Mario's outlook as a largely unskilled worker, either in the automotive business or the local cement industry was rather bleak - as was Aldo's! And, of course, there was this desire! Ever since watching Ascari fight the silver arrows at Monza in 1954, the twins had wanted to race real Racing cars - this Stock car business was "doable", nice fun and made some money, but it wasn't really what they were after; it was just a means to get started in the racing game. Now, for Mario at least, it was time to move on, to the fully professional regional series of the URC (Sprint cars) and ARDC (Midgets), which he competed in regularly over the next couple of years, before making the step up to USAC, and the national level - the beginning of a meteoric rise to stardom.

For Billy Tanzosh, though, a fully professional career was never really on the cards - after all, his old man expected him to take over the contracting business one day, and in a small town world of grocery shopping lists, school fees and mortgages that was nothing to be put aside easily. Billy continued racing at the fairgrounds year after year, won the subdivison (now renamed the "Limited Sportsmen") track championship in 1962 and '63, then switched over to the Modifieds, where he was still chasing his first feature win when Mario found the entrance to victory lane at Indianapolis in 1969, coming home to a hero's welcome that summer, during which Market Street was officially renamed Victory Lane, to honour Nazareth's favourite son. Over the years, Billy stopped racing to concentrate on business, then picked it up again, raced sporadically, then full time, depending on finance and availability of spare time. But on July 15 in 1979, Billy Tanzosh finally managed what no Andretti ever succeeded in doing, he won a real (i.e. Modified) main event at Nazareth Fairgrounds speedway, the same weekend that Mario returned from another frustrating race in Europe, slowly realizing that he wouldn't be repeating as racing driver champion of the world. For Billy, though, things were now on the up and up, and he also won the Modified track championship that year, the first driver in Nazareth history to win titles in both divisions. He won another three main events on the way to a runner-up finish in points the following year, then repeated his 1979 performance (one main event and the championship) in '81, the same year he took over the contracting business when his father retired. That finally slowed him down, and he continued with increasingly sporadic appearances before finally calling it a day in 1985 - the same year Mario tried, unsuccessfully, to repeat as CART World Series Champion, his fourth Indy car title in a record span of twenty years, and the beginning of his last decade in the premier league of US motor sports. At the time of writing, Billy still lives in Nazareth (as does Mario), but no longer in Mauch Chunk Street (which still hasn't been renamed).

And what about Aldo? I hear you ask, isn't his a thread about ALDO Andretti?? Indeed it is, but unfortunately, there isn't much to say about Aldo in 1960. He did compete, more or less regularly, but in short, it was a year to forget, even though he did win another heat race fairly early on in May (squashing suggestions by the legend that he was "taking a sabbatical", or racing with a permanent handicap). Although the physical consequences of the crash may have been overstated by many accounts, the psychological effects must not be overlooked - I can sympathize, in a way: I've been in two fairly major road car accidents in my life, and whilst escaping physical harm, both times I subsequently found it very difficult to regain confidence in my driving for weeks, if not months. I can only imagine how bad that must be for a racing driver, when you have to force yourself relentlessly to push to the limit at every turn, against every opponent. Confidence is perhaps the biggest asset for a racing driver; if you don't have it, you may as well stay at home. Fortunately, time does heal those psychological wounds, although opinion is divided over the long term consequences - some drivers claim that every major crash will slow you "one tenth", while others say that crashes will make you drive more safely, but not necessarily slower. In Aldo's case, it may have been an altogether different problem: lack of a suitable car. The old Hudson was wrecked thoroughly in that Hatfield accident, by all accounts, though maybe the engine (the most valuable bit) survived - it's possible it was put into an old Ford chassis for Mario to race as a red Tanzosh #7. Later that year, Mario apparently raced a different car, a white Hudson #7, also for Tanzosh (maybe the car driven by Billy earlier on?). It is unclear to me what Aldo could have driven in those early races, maybe he was even forced to go begging for rides along pit row, although he seems to have taken over the Ford/Hudson after Mario was through with it.

Edited by Michael Ferner, 19 January 2021 - 16:45.

# Date d/n Day Laps Modified Sprtsmn Second            Third            Laps Strictly Stock   Second            Third
 
 1 May  1 n Sun 25 Leroy Felty       Johnny Dubendorf  Freddie Adam      --
 2 May  8 n Sun  0 (RAIN after heats, feature run May 15)                --
   May 15 n Sun 25 Leroy Felty       Sonny Strupp      Otto Harwi        -- (make-up feature for May 8)
 3              25 Dick Tobias       Leroy Felty       Johnny Dubendorf  --
 4 May 22 n Sun  0 (RAIN)                                                 0 (RAIN)
   May 29 n Sun  ? Otto Harwi        Freddie Adam      Bob Malzahn       -- (URC Sprint cars)
 5 Jun  5 n Sun 25 Ken Wismer        George Sleight    Otto Harwi        -- (Joie Chitwood Thrill Show)
 - Jun  9 n Thu --                                                       25 Russ Ahner        Luther Muffley    Zorro Engler
 6 Jun 12 n Sun  0 (RAIN)                                                 0 (RAIN)
 - Jun 16 n Thu --                                                       25 Russ Ahner        Luther Muffley    George Dilworth
   Jun 19 n Sun 25 Jackie McLaughlin Otto Harwi        Ken Wismer        20 Mike Muffley      George Dilworth   Del Hahn
 - Jun 23 n Thu --                                                        0 (RAIN after heats, feature run Jun 30)
 7 Jun 26 n Sun 50 Bob Malzahn       Otto Harwi        Jim Delaney       -- (Mid-Season Championship)
 - Jun 30 n Thu -- (make-up feature for Jun 23)                          25 Russ Ahner        Del Hahn          Sam Beavers
 -              --                                                       25 Bill Lavenburg    Mike Muffley      Gene Hampton
 8 Jul  3 n Sun  0 (RAIN)                                                -- (URC Sprint cars)
 - Jul  7 n Thu --                                                       25 Mario Andretti    John Bright       Del Hahn
   Jul 10 n Sun 25 Jackie McLaughlin Bob Malzahn       Otto Harwi        -- (Jack Kochman Hell Drivers)
 - Jul 14 n Thu --                                                        0 (RAIN)
 9 Jul 17 n Sun 25 Al Tasnady        Frankie Schneider Budd Olsen        25 Gene Kohr         Russ Ahner        Luther Muffley
 - Jul 21 n Thu --                                                       25 Billy Tanzosh     Russ Ahner        Mario Andretti
10 Jul 24 n Sun 25 Frankie Schneider Jackie McLaughlin Budd Olsen        25 Billy Tanzosh     Mario Andretti    Russ Ahner
 - Jul 28 n Thu --                                                       25 Billy Tanzosh     Gene Hampton      Russ Ahner
11 Jul 31 n Sun 25 Al Tasnady        Bob Rossell       Bob Malzahn       25 Billy Tanzosh     Larry Bowers      Harp Wink
 - Aug  4 n Thu --                                                        0 (RAIN after heats, feature run Aug 11)
12 Aug  7 n Sun 25 Jackie McLaughlin Hoop Schaible     Fred Fehr         25 Mario Andretti    Harp Wink         George Dilworth
                25 Herb Tillman      Jackie McLaughlin Bob Malzahn       -- (Twin Modified Feature)
 - Aug 11 n Thu -- (make-up feature for Aug 4)                           25 Mario Andretti    Gene Hampton      Harp Wink
 -              --                                                       25 Mario Andretti    Mike Muffley      George Dilworth
13 Aug 14 n Sun 25 Frankie Schneider Jackie McLaughlin Hoop Schaible     -- (URC Sprint cars)
 - Aug 18 n Thu --                                                       25 Mario Andretti    Harp Wink         Luther Muffley
14 Aug 21 n Sun 25 Jackie McLaughlin Al Tasnady        Hoop Schaible     25 Harp Wink         Ray Garloff       George Dilworth
 - Aug 25 n Thu --                                                       25 Billy Tanzosh     Mario Andretti    Gene Hampton
15 Aug 28 n Sun 25 Frankie Schneider Al Tasnady        Carl van Horn     15 Mario Andretti    Bill Gake         Billy Tanzosh
 - Sep  1 n Thu --                                                        0 (RAIN)
16 Sep  4 n Sun 25 Frankie Schneider Al Tasnady        Carl van Horn     -- (URC Sprint cars)
17 Sep  5 d Mon 25 Frankie Schneider Otto Harwi        Sonny Strupp      -- (motor cycle races)
18 Sep 11 n Sun  0 (RAIN)                                                 0 (RAIN)
   Sep 18 n Sun  0 (RAIN)                                                 0 (RAIN)
   Sep 25 n Sun 25 Carl van Horn     Jackie McLaughlin Bob Malzahn        ? ?                 ?                 ?
19 Oct  2 d Sun 25 Sonny Strupp      Otto Harwi                          ??
20 Oct 16 d Sun 25 Frankie Schneider Sonny Strupp      Jackie McLaughlin ??
21 Oct 23 d Sun  0 (RAIN)                                                 0 (RAIN)
   Oct 30 d Sun 25 Al Tasnady        Sonny Strupp      Frankie Schneider ?? Mario Andretti    Billy Tanzosh     Luther Muffley

                                       Main Event &     Heat results
   Modified Sportsman division         1  2  3  4  5    1  2  3  4  5

*1 Otto Harwi        Easton/PA         1  4  3  2  1    3  5  5  1  3
 2 Bob Malzahn       Kingsbury/NJ      1  1  5  4  2    3  6  3  3  1
 3 Frankie Schneider Lambertville/NJ   6  1  1  3  1    7  2  6  1  2
 4 Jackie McLaughlin Thorofare/NJ      4  4  1  2  -    9  -  2  1  -
 5 Sonny Strupp      S. Plainfield/NJ  1  3  1  1  3    4  5  1  3  1
 6 Al Tasnady        Vineland/NJ       3  3  -  1  -    3  4  2  1  1
 7 Ken Wismer        Riegelsville/PA   1  -  1  1  2    3  1  3  3  1
 8 Bob Rossell       Corktown/NJ       -  1  -  1  -    2  4  2  -  2
 9 Harry Charles     Easton/PA         -  -  -  -  2    1  5  5  -  -
10 Hoop Schaible     Upper Black Eddy  -  1  2  -  1    2  3  1  2  1
   Leroy Felty       Jonestown/PA      2  1  -  -  -    2  1  -  -  -
   Carl van Horn     Belvidere/NJ      1  -  2  -  -    1  1  5  2  -
   Dick Tobias       Lebanon/PA        1  -  -  1  -    2  -  -  -  -
   Herb Tillman      Hollywood/FL      1  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Freddie Adam      Kutztown/PA       -  1  1  -  -    3  1  3  2  -
   Johnny Dubendorf  Lebanon/PA        -  1  1  -  -    2  -  -  -  -
   George Sleight    Easton/PA         -  1  -  -  -    1  1  1  -  2
   Budd Olsen        Paulsboro/NJ      -  -  2  -  -    2  1  1  1  2
   Jim Delaney       Easton/PA         -  -  1  1  -    -  1  -  -  1
   Fred Fehr         Easton/PA         -  -  1  -  -    -  1  -  1  -
   Jim Metzler       Pottersville/NJ   -  -  -  1  1    4  -  -  3  -
   Les Farley        Califon/NJ        -  -  -  1  -    2  6  3  2  -
   Dick Havens       Georgetown/DE     -  -  -  1  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Bill de Coster    Basking Ridge/NJ  -  -  -  -  1    4  -  1  1  2
   Tom Napolitano    Whippany/NJ       -  -  -  -  1    1  1  1  -  -
   Elton Hildreth    Bridgeton/NJ      -  -  -  -  1    -  1  -  -  -
   Whip Mulligan     Denville/NJ       -  -  -  -  -    2  2  1  2  2
   Bill Wark         Barrington/NJ     -  -  -  -  -    2  -  1  1  1
   Bob Weismeyer     Orlando/FL        -  -  -  -  -    1  3  2  2  -
   Bill Deskovich    Hanover/NJ        -  -  -  -  -    1  3  1  1  2
   Warren Mutter     Boyertown/PA      -  -  -  -  -    1  -  1  -  -
   Buck Schuster                       -  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  1  -
   Bob Hall          Flemington/NJ     -  -  -  -  -    -  1  1  -  -
   Frank Geraghty    Paterson/NJ       -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  2
   D. D. Harris      Greenville/NC     -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Blackie Reider    Reading/PA        -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Tommy McAndrews   Bethlehem/PA      -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Bob Allison       Miami/FL          -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Bill Hensler      Somerville/NJ     -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Harold Scott      Mount Pleasant/NJ -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   John Kuminski     Ironton/PA        -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Ed Farley         Califon/NJ        -  -  -  -  -    -  -  2  2  -
   Bob Pickell       Flemington/NJ     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  2  1  1
   Tom Brokaw        Neshanic/NJ       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  2  -  1
   Will Cagle        Tampa/FL          -  -  -  -  -    -  -  2  -  -
   Don Hughes        Three Bridges/NJ  -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  1  -
   Al Chamberlain    Altoona/PA        -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Bob Allen                           -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Danny Mitchell    Middletown/NY     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Don Stecker       Vineland/NJ       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   George Harrison                     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Clyde Sydam       Asbury/NJ         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  1
   Paul Bologash     Jim Thorpe/PA     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  -
   Larry Post                          -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  -
   Don Crouse        Paterson/NJ       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  2
   Marty Acker       Alburtis/PA       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  2
   Smokey Dengler    Reading/PA        -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Lee Hendrickson   Lawrenceville/NJ  -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Dave Ritacco      Flemington/NJ     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Walt Donald                         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1

   Strictly Stock division

=> Mario Andretti    Nazareth/PA       7  2  1  -  -   14  -  -  -  - <=
   Billy Tanzosh     Nazareth/PA       5  1  1  2  -    5  6  -  2  -
   Russ Ahner        Lehighton/PA      3  2  2  -  1    5  2  3  -  2
   Harp Wink         Schuylkill Haven  1  2  2  -  -    4  3  2  1  -
   Mike Muffley      Lehighton/PA      1  2  -  5  2    2  7  1  2  2
   Bill Lavenburg    Allentown/PA      1  -  -  1  1    3  1  5  3  2
   Gene Kohr         Jonestown/PA      1  -  -  1  -    2  -  1  -  -
   Luther Muffley    Lehighton/PA      -  2  3  1  -    2  4  -  1  -
   Gene Hampton      Allentown/PA      -  2  2  3  -    2  3  2  1  1
   George Dilworth   North Wales/PA    -  1  4  2  3    4  4  5  4  -
   Del Hahn          Slatington/PA     -  1  2  -  -    4  2  1  1  -
   John Bright       Hellertown/PA     -  1  -  -  1    2  1  -  1  -
   Larry Bowers      Hampton/NJ        -  1  -  -  -    1  4  1  1  1
   Ray Garloff       Myerstown/PA      -  1  -  -  -    1  -  -  -  -
   Bill Gake         Paterson/NJ       -  1  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Sam Beavers       Raritan/NJ        -  -  1  -  2    3  4  2  1  1
   Zorro Engler      Easton/PA         -  -  1  -  -    1  4  1  -  -
   Herb Frenchko     Easton/PA         -  -  -  2  -    2  2  3  1  1
   Bobby Bottcher    Lehighton/PA      -  -  -  1  2    2  -  3  2  -
   Ray Knight        Branchville/NJ    -  -  -  -  1    2  -  -  1  1
   Hal Wilson        Nazareth/PA       -  -  -  -  1    1  1  1  -  1
   Art Whitesell     Branchville/NJ    -  -  -  -  1    1  -  2  2  1
   Joe Inglin        Flemington/NJ     -  -  -  -  1    1  -  2  2  -
   Ears Mayberry     Pottsville/PA     -  -  -  -  1    -  -  2  2  -
   Dick Altemose     Pen Argyl/PA      -  -  -  -  1    -  -  1  -  -
   Doug Sanders      Hamburg/NJ        -  -  -  -  -    2  3  4  1  2
   Leo Livengood     Walnutport/PA     -  -  -  -  -    2  -  1  1  -
   Carl Rodenbach    Riegelsville/PA   -  -  -  -  -    1  3  -  -  -
   Tom Rooney        Allentown/PA      -  -  -  -  -    1  2  -  1  -
   Ernie Mease       Hellertown/PA     -  -  -  -  -    1  1  3  -  1
   Joe Fernandez     Oxford/NJ         -  -  -  -  -    1  1  -  1  2
   Charlie Mitch     Nazareth/PA       -  -  -  -  -    1  1  -  -  1
   Barney Swope      Upper Black Eddy  -  -  -  -  -    1  1  -  -  1
   Al Smith          Bedminster/PA     -  -  -  -  -    1  -  2  1  -
   Bob Smith         Lebanon/NJ        -  -  -  -  -    1  -  1  1  -
   Elwood Faust      Hecktown/PA       -  -  -  -  -    1  -  1  -  -
=> Aldo Andretti     Nazareth/PA       -  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  -  - <=
   Bud Garlons       Pottsville/PA     -  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  -  -
   Joe Kehrle        Jim Thorpe/PA     -  -  -  -  -    -  4  2  1  -
   Neil Groller      Easton/PA         -  -  -  -  -    -  2  2  3  1
   Charlie Schoudt   Riegelsville/PA   -  -  -  -  -    -  2  1  -  -
   Ward Crozier      Easton/PA         -  -  -  -  -    -  1  3  2  -
   Don Laubach       Hecktown/PA       -  -  -  -  -    -  1  2  -  3
   Walt Smith        Allentown/PA      -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  2  1
   Geo. Steigerwalt  Jim Thorpe/PA     -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  1
   Blain Sadler      Trooper/PA        -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Skip Oetsel       Hatfield/PA       -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Bob Itterie                         -  -  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Bill Moore        Phillipsburg/NJ   -  -  -  -  -    -  -  2  -  1
   Bill Kolan        Somerville/NJ     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  2  -  -
   Chuck Henshaw     Bloomsbury/NJ     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  4  -
   Al Berger         Stewartsville/NJ  -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  3
   Bud Wachter                         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Cliff Cuneo       Newton/NJ         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Will Buehrle      Sellersville/PA   -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   John Sickle       Easton/PA         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Jack Kibblehouse  Lansdale/PA       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   John Thomas       Coopersburg/PA    -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Bob Wilkie        Plymouth Meeting  -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Don Hume          Oxford/NJ         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Bill Oakley       Hampton/NJ        -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Fred Fritche      Paterson/NJ       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Leon Davis        McAfee/NJ         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  1
   John Daniels      Neshanic/NJ       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  1
   Dick Coulton                        -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  -
   Leo Hockenberry   High Bridge/NJ    -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  -
   Larry Millheim    Nazareth/PA       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  -
   Jack Jones        Slatington/PA     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  -
   Dick Kerby        Keyport/NJ        -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  -
   Lewis Nail        Bethlehem/PA      -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  -
   Frank Kolva                         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  1  -
   Hilbert Green     Lehighton/PA      -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Joe Murray        Stroudsburg/PA    -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Johnny Edwards    Easton/PA         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Jack Lippincott   Phillipsburg/NJ   -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Darwin Frantz     Palmerton/PA      -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Bill Winters      Hampton/NJ        -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Charlie Bowers    Alburtis/PA       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Bob Brack         Quakertown/PA     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Rocky Smith       Paterson/NJ       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Bud Collins       Easton/PA         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Bill Cramer       Branchville/NJ    -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Bob Hummell       Paterson/NJ       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Roy Stem          Easton/PA         -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Charles Decker    Bridgeport/PA     -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Dennis Muldooney  Paterson/NJ       -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Clarence Williamson                 -  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1

* in non-period tabulations Bob Malzahn is often listed as champion

Edited by Michael Ferner, 24 January 2021 - 10:15.

As a sort of send-off to Mario (though we will meet him again in this thread, of course), let's take a quick look at what he was getting himself into in 1961. While the 1960 statistics clearly show that he had somewhat "outgrown" the Strictly Stock car division at Nazareth, moving into the world of Big car racing was still a pretty courageous decision at this point. The Sprint cars, as they were now mostly called, were not only a lot more dangerous than the Stock cars, but also more expensive to build and to maintain, so that an impecunious newcomer had a tough uphill struggle ahead to even only grab a foothold in the sport, let alone make some dough for a living. Sprint car owners were notorious for their hire-and-fire politics, and many a rookie driver found himself pushing too hard too soon in this pressure cooker atmosphere, paying for it with "sheet time" or even with his life. In fact, the whole setup of Sprint car racing was more volatile in many ways, with some car owners running out of money even before they ran out of patience, leading to skittish promoters being wary of small fields and dissatisfied patrons, causing sanctioning clubs to go belly-up with depressing regularity. Historically, this was a difficult time for the Big cars, less than a decade before the Super Modified/Super Sprint "revolution" injected fresh blood into the category: overall, the number of Sprint car meetings had been in decline for nigh on thirty years, and even a small club like the URC (United Racing Club) that Mario was joining now, had to cover a relatively large geographical area to find enough dates and venues to make for a worthwhile schedule.
 
Founded in 1948 as a "Class B" circuit affiliating with the mighty Contest Board of the AAA and racing mainly in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, the URC quickly expanded its map to include tracks in New England and Dixie, even Canada on occasions, and by the late fifties/early sixties, it was the only independent (i.e. non-AAA or USAC) Sprint car sanctioning body on the eastern seaboard. By this time, all other independent clubs and tracks had opted for the cheaper Stock cars instead, where a driver could make a comfy living racing three or four times a week, often within a very confined area. Extremely attractive for semi-professionals like Billy Tanzosh, and still good enough for a large number of hopefuls who had tried and failed to make a career in Sprints - of those racing at Nazareth week after week, Frankie Schneider had raced Big cars in NASCAR's Speedway division in 1952, before deciding to concentrate on the Modifieds for a career spanning almost fifty years (!); Budd Olsen had raced Sprints extensively during the first half of the fifties, including AAA and an independent championship in 1951, while his brother-in-law Jackie McLaughlin raced independent clubs and USAC between 1953 and '57. Otto Harwi, Bob Malzahn and many others tried it at least once, while a few, like Will Cagle, Leroy Felty or Dick Tobias would eventually have substantial careers in the Sprints, but too late in life to make it to the very top - the latter, incidentally, crashing fatally during a USAC Sprint car show while in his mid forties, a week before Mario won his second French Grand Prix on the way to the 1978 World Championship.
 
Meanwhile, for the time being at the very least, Aldo was left behind his twin brother, not able to keep up with the energetic Mario. At one time not that long ago, the siblings had shared the same dream, the same ambition, the same plans for the future, but after a thoroughly disastrous year such as 1960, Aldo was likely already in the process of adjusting his outlook. Truth to be told, 1960 hadn't been a total failure for him - far from it - as he had married the woman which was going to spend the next 60 years at his side, and gave birth to his first daughter in spring, just before the 1961 racing season started at Nazareth. Mario was going steady, too, but his idea was to establish himself firmly as a professional racer before his eventual nuptials in November - he wasn't going to support a family with a job at the gas station. Well, Aldo had little choice, but was still determined to turn the corner at the speedway, and eventually he got his career back on track. Mario warmed up by running one or two Sundays at Nazareth before his Sprint car debut in May, with Aldo presumably taking over his brother's Tanzosh ride, and immediately mixing it up with the fast boys at the sharp end of the field.

 
In fact, Aldo did well enough to stay in the points hunt for the newly named Limited Sportsmen track championship until late in the season, though he didn't win a main event all year. This may be as good a time as any to elaborate for a while on track championships, and motor sports record keeping in general: as already outlined above, period sources consistently credit Otto Harwi with the 1960 Modified title at Nazareth, while later sources generally list Bob Malzahn instead. Initially, I suspected a scenario where a protest changed the points long after the last race of the season, with the newspapers failing to report because it's not really their wont to follow up on such "minor" details - usually, they just print previews on behalf of (and not seldomly written by) the promoter, and send a reporter to portray the event on the day; anything beyond that gets lost in the vortex of time. Yet, all through 1961 Harwi was still consistently refered to as the defending (and a six-time) champion, and I have found several reports listing the complete top ten in the championship - evidently, the modern sources are plain wrong about this. And it's not an isolated occurence, not by a very long way: an especially baffling example of the same problem was pointed out many years ago by several historians, when the American Racing Drivers Club (ARDC), the Midget organization which Mario Andretti was about to join in 1962, listed Mike Nazaruk as its 1953 club champion until very recently, and many publications simply copied the info from there. In reality, Nazaruk had long since stopped competing for the club in 1950, and raced in AAA events exclusively that year! How could such an elementary mistake have happened? Apparently, the ARDC, leading Midget club in the east for virtually the whole second half of the last century (and still in existence today), had never kept original documentation in the first place, and relied instead on the recollections of fans or "scrapbook research" (i.e. collections of newspaper or magazine article cutouts by fans or relatives of drivers and/or owners)!
 
And if a big sanctioning body like the ARDC resorted to such tactics, what are the chances that the many hundreds of tracks around the country did any better? Tracks that often change management, if not ownership on a year-to-year basis? That's right, if the documentation existed in the first place, it's a sure bet that it has been dumped on a regular basis over the years. Things have improved only slightly with the coming of the "information age" and the internet, as websites have to be maintained, and domain fees have to be paid, so that it's not entirely surprising to find that even recent documentation disappears very fast indeed. All of which may serve as a long-winded explanation of the fact that the same sources which list Bob Malzahn as the 1960 Modified champion at Nazareth, also assign the 1961 Limited Sporstmen championship to Stan Ploski of New Jersey - which is all very fine except that Ploski, by his own admission, started racing at age 18, in 1962! Sure enough, Ploski's old man by the same name also raced, though not very successfully, and I can't find any record of him competing at Nazareth - certainly not in 1961, and definitely not with the kind of success needed to win a track championship, as the tables in the next post will show. Regrettably, the Limited Sportsmen (née Strictly Stock) division never gained enough popularity in period for newspapers to make more than passing comments about the category points race, so I can't say for sure who won the title in 1961, or the years before. It's a good bet, though, that Mario won in 1960, and that Aldo was probably in the top five the following year.

Edited by Michael Ferner, 28 January 2021 - 19:14.

# Date d/n Day Laps Modified Sprtsmn Second            Third            Laps Strictly Stock   Second            Third
 
 1 Apr  9 d Sun 25 Al Tasnady        Bob Malzahn       Les Farley         ? Bob Brack         Luther Muffley    Russ Ahner
 2 Apr 16 d Sun  0 (RAIN)                                                 0 (RAIN)
   Apr 23 d Sun 25 Al Tasnady        Frankie Schneider Otto Harwi        10 Hal Reifman       Bill Lavenburg    Earl Santee
 3 Apr 30 d Sun 25 Otto Harwi        Freddie Adam      Bob Malzahn        ? Bill Lavenburg    Bobby Bottcher    Bob Brack
 4 May  7 n Sun  0 (RAIN after heats, feature run May 14)                -- (AMA Motor cycles)
   May 14 d Sun 25 Frankie Schneider Bob Malzahn       Al Tasnady        -- (make-up feature for May 7)
 5              25 Bob Malzahn       Otto Harwi        Budd Olsen        20 Billy Tanzosh     Bill Lavenburg    Aldo Andretti
 6 May 21 n Sun 25 Al Tasnady        Bob Malzahn       Ken Wismer         ? Del Hahn          tie Bill Lavenburg & Aldo Andretti
 7 May 28 n Sun 25 Bob Malzahn       Frankie Schneider Carl van Horn      7 Bill Lavenburg    Billy Tanzosh     Larry Bowers
 8 May 30 n Tue 25 Bob Malzahn       Al Tasnady        Frankie Schneider  ? Del Hahn          Bob Brack         Billy Tanzosh
 9 Jun  4 n Sun 25 Ken Wismer        Bill Deskovich    Al Tasnady        15 Del Bitting       Aldo Andretti     Billy Tanzosh
10 Jun 11 n Sun 25 Budd Olsen        Al Tasnady        Bob Malzahn        ? Billy Tanzosh     Ed Goeke          Larry Bowers
11 Jun 18 n Sun 25 Al Tasnady        Ken Wismer        Otto Harwi        15 Bob Brack         Larry Bowers      Billy Tanzosh
12 Jun 25 n Sun 25 Whip Mulligan     Les Farley        Bill Deskovich    15 George Dilworth   Larry Bowers      Al Berger
13 Jul  2 n Sun 25 (RAIN after heats, feature run Jul 4)                  0 (RAIN)
14 Jul  3 n Mon 25 Budd Olsen        Frankie Schneider Al Tasnady        -- (URC Sprint cars)
13 Jul  4 n Tue 25 Carl van Horn     Dick Tobias       Budd Olsen        -- (make-up feature for Jul 2)
15              25 Al Tasnady        Bob Malzahn       Budd Olsen        -- (fireworks)
16 Jul  9 n Sun 25 Bob Malzahn       Budd Olsen        Al Tasnady        15 Hal Wilson        Aldo Andretti     Larry Bowers
17 Jul 16 n Sun 25 Frankie Schneider Jim Delaney       Harry Moore       15 Hal Wilson        Larry Bowers      Aldo Andretti
18 Jul 23 n Sun 25 Budd Olsen        Bob Malzahn       Dick Tobias       15 Harp Wink         Jerry Katz        Bob Brack
19 Jul 30 n Sun 25 Al Tasnady        Frankie Schneider Budd Olsen        15 Harp Wink         Charlie Bayley    Gene Hampton
20 Aug  6 n Sun 25 Frankie Schneider Jim Delaney       Whip Mulligan     -- (Jack Kochman Hell Drivers)
 - Aug 10 n Thu --                                                        0 (RAIN)
21 Aug 13 n Sun  ? Bob Malzahn       Ed Farley         Frankie Schneider  ? Harp Wink         Don Loder         Harold Reifinger
 - Aug 17 n Thu --                                                       25 Gene Hampton      Del Hahn          Harp Wink
22 Aug 20 n Sun  0 (RAIN)                                                -- (parachute jumping & quarter midgets)
 - Aug 24 n Thu --                                                        ? George Dilworth   Del Hahn          Jerry Katz
   Aug 27 n Sun 25 Al Tasnady        Frankie Schneider Les Farley        10 George Dilworth   Joe Inglin        Al Berger
 - Aug 31 n Thu --                                                        ? George Dilworth   Norm Fritz        Tommy McAndrews
23 Sep  3 n Sun  ? Al Tasnady        ?                 ?                 -- (parachute jumping & quarter midgets)
24 Sep  4 n Mon 25 Frankie Schneider Bpb Malzahn       Al Tasnady        -- (AMA Motor cycles)
25 Sep 10 n Sun 25 Frankie Schneider Jackie McLaughlin Carl van Horn     15 Don Loder         Bobby Bottcher    Billy Tanzosh
26 Sep 17 n Sun 25 Jackie McLaughlin Budd Olsen        Wally Dallenbach   ? Smith             Bobby Bottcher    Don Loder
27 Sep 24 n Sun 25 Ed Farley         Ken Wismer        Whip Mulligan     ??
 - Oct  1 d Sun –-                                                       -- (USAC & ARDC Midgets)
 - Oct 15 d Sun --                                                       20 Bob Brack         Norm Fritz        Larry Bowers

                                       Main Event &     Heat results
   Modified Sportsman division         1  2  3  4  5    1  2  3  4  5
 
 1 Al Tasnady        Vineland/NJ       8  2  5  -  2    9  7  5  1  -
 2 Bob Malzahn       Tampa/FL          5  6  2  2  4    4  6  5  5  2
 3 Frankie Schneider Lambertville/NJ   5  5  2  -  5    7  7  2  4  2
 4 Budd Olsen        Paulsboro/NJ      3  2  4  3  1    9  4  6  -  -
 5 Ken Wismer        Riegelsville/PA   1  2  1  3  1    4  4  4  4  2
 6 Otto Harwi        Easton/PA         1  1  2  2  2    6  2  3  2  4
 7 Bob Pickell       Flemington/NJ     -  -  -  1  2    2  4  3  4  1
 8 Carl van Horn     Belvidere/NJ      1  -  2  3  1    3  3  1  3  -
 9 Les Farley        Califon/NJ        -  1  2  1  -    7  2  4  3  2
10 Ed Farley         Califon/NJ        1  1  -  1  -    3  1  1  5  1
   Jackie McLaughlin Thorofare/NJ      1  1  -  2  -    2  -  3  2  5
   Whip Mulligan     Indian Lake/NJ    1  -  2  1  -    1  1  3  2  1
   Jim Delaney       Easton/PA         -  2  -  -  -    4  1  -  1  1
   Bill Deskovich    Hanover/NJ        -  1  1  2  2    4  3  1  3  2
   Dick Tobias       Lebanon/PA        -  1  -  2  1    1  3  3  1  3
   Freddie Adam      Kutztown/PA       -  1  -  -  -    1  3  2  2  2
   Harry Moore       Pottstown/PA      -  -  1  -  -    -  4  2  2  1
   Wally Dallenbach  East Brunswick/NJ -  -  1  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Sonny Strupp      S. PLainfield/NJ  -  -  -  1  2    -  3  3  3  2
   George Sleight    Easton/PA         -  -  -  1  -    -  2  -  2  2
   Sam Beavers       Raritan/NJ        -  -  -  -  2    -  1  4  3  3
   Fred Fehr         Easton/PA         -  -  -  -  1    -  1  -  1  2
   Russ Hoek                           -  -  -  -  -    2  -  -  -  -
   Harry Charles     Easton/PA         -  -  -  -  -    1  2  2  2  2
   Roy Pauch                           -  -  -  -  -    1  1  3  2  2
   Don Hughes        Three Bridges/NJ  -  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  -  1
   Bob Weismeyer     Orlando/FL        -  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  -  1
   Paul Bologash                       -  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  -  -
   Walt Donald                         -  -  -  -  -    -  2  1  2  1
   Tommy Sheetz                        -  -  -  -  -    -  1  1  1  1
etc. 
 
   Limited Sportsman division
 
   George Dilworth   North Wales/PA    4  -  -  1  1    3  5  3  3  2
   Bob Brack         Quakertown/PA     3  1  2  1  1    5  5  1  -  -
   Harp Wink         Schuylkill Haven  3  -  1  -  -    3  3  -  1  -
   Bill Lavenburg    Allentown/PA      2  2½ ½  1  1    2  3  2  1  1
   Del Hahn          Slatington/PA     2  2  -  -  -    -  6  1  1  1
   Billy Tanzosh     Nazareth/PA       2  1  4  1  -    2  3  4  -  -
   Hal Wilson        Nazareth/PA       2  -  -  -  -    1  -  1  -  -
   Don Loder         Schwenksville/PA  1  1  1  1  -    4  -  -  -  -
   Gene Hampton      Allentown/PA      1  -  1  -  1    3  -  2  -  -
   Del Bitting       Reading/PA        1  -  -  -  -    3  -  -  -  -
   ? Smith                             1  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  1  -
   Hal Reifman       Hazleton/PA       1  -  -  -  -    -  -  -  -  1
   Larry Bowers      Hampton/NJ        -  3  4  -  3    2  3  4  4  4
   Bobby Bottcher    Lehighton/PA      -  3  -  -  1    3  2  2  3  -
=> Aldo Andretti     Nazareth/PA       -  2½ 2½ -  2    7  3  3  2  2 <=
   Norm Fritz        Boyertown/PA      -  2  -  -  1    1  -  -  1  2
   Jerry Katz        Reading/PA        -  1  1  -  -    -  2  -  -  -
   Joe Inglin        Raritan/NJ        -  1  -  2  1    5  3  -  -  -
   Ed Goeke          Princeton/NJ      -  1  -  -  -    1  1  1  1  1
   Luther Muffley    Lehighton/PA      -  1  -  -  -    -  2  1  -  2
   Charlie Bayley    Leesport/PA       -  1  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Al Berger         Stewartsville/NJ  -  -  2  -  -    1  1  4  4  3
   Earl Santee       Slatington/PA     -  -  1  2  -    -  1  1  1  3
   Russ Ahner        Lehighton/PA      -  -  1  1  -    1  -  1  -  1
   Harold Reifinger  Reading/PA        -  -  1  1  -    1  -  -  1  -
   Tommy McAndrews   Allentown/PA      -  -  1  -  -    1  -  1  1  -
   Charlie Shoudt    Riegelsville/PA   -  -  -  3  3    2  2  3  3  4
   Don Davis         Langhorne/PA      -  -  -  1  -    1  1  1  -  1
   Doug Sanders      Hamburg/NJ        -  -  -  1  -    1  -  1  1  -
=> Mario Andretti    Nazareth/PA       -  -  -  1  -    -  1  -  -  1 <=
   ? Linkhurst                         -  -  -  1  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Herb Frenchko     Easton/PA         -  -  -  1  -    -  -  1  2  -
etc.

Edited by Michael Ferner, 28 January 2021 - 19:42.

No, don’t tell me, I know it: I need to get on with the story, Aldo’s story - and I will, promise. It’s just that the portrait needs a proper frame, and in this case, it needs to be extra sturdy, because everywhere Aldo went to compete, there was always this elephant in the room, and it grew bigger and bigger as the years went by. Everywhere, people were asking themselves the same question: was he another Mario, or was he merely the (not so) identical twin? At every track around the country, there was a pair of racing boots waiting for Aldo, inevitably at least one size too big, a situation not at all helped by the fact that, as Mario was climbing ever higher on the stairway to national prominence, Aldo was treading water for the next few years. And yet, by the end of the 1961 season, it didn’t really look like they were lightyears apart, for Mario hadn’t exactly taken the Sprint car world by storm. In the Stock cars, he had earned a reputation as a fast but somewhat erratic performer: almost unbeatable in the short heat races, but not always around when the main event purse and points were distributed. Now, with the far more powerful and lighter Sprints, it seemed almost like he was wavering, or perhaps a bit overawed, but maybe he was just being sensible: a sprinkling of top ten finishes, peppered with a couple of spinouts, but no major accidents, resulting in a solid 17th in URC points, five places behind the club’s Rookie of the Year, Sal Moschella from New Jersey, a Modified Stock car veteran in his mid-thirties. Moschella would continue to run the Sprints in URC events, and occasionally USAC for the next seven years or so, collecting three main events and as many URC points finishes in the lower regions of the top ten along the way. His last appearance in my records is a heat win, ironically enough at Nazareth, in August of 1968 – less than a month before Mario made his Formula One debut at Monza in Italy.

Back in the winter of 1961/'62, Mario had to keep busy as a self-professed racing professional, taking in some Stock car events and indoor racing at the Teaneck Armory in New Jersey, and rediscovering the "fire in his belly", as he was wont to say. He crashed a Stock car heavily at Hatfield, two years almost to the day after Aldo's crash in the same place, but got away unhurt - unlke three spectators he hit, who ended up with broken bones - and got into a heated, "near-fistic" argument with the reigning track champion at Teaneck on only his second appearance there, after both of them had claimed the same spot of race track and crashed. His opponent, Jim Lacy was described as "burly", so the diminutive Mario (at 5 feet 6 and 135 lbs)  was defintely not lacking in courage! But yes, the Armory in Teaneck, just a mile or so west from the Hudson river and the Bronx on the other side, was just what the doctors ordered, and Mario took with a zest to the little concrete track, barely over 500 feet in length, making him a main event winner within eight weeks. Racing at Teaneck was for Three-Quarter (TQ) Midgets, a relatively new class which was rapidly gaining in popularity - if the "ordinary" Midget in the US can be compared to a Formula 3 car in Europe, the TQ Midget was just a step below, not unlike Formula Ford, although with motor cycle engines (Mario was driving an ex-Bobby Marshman car with a British Triumph) or the ubiquitous Crosley fours, and attracted even some Indy 500 veterans, like Len Duncan or Tony Bonadies, to compete with the young hopefuls. Cutting back on his Sprint car racing, Mario decided that this was the way forward, and by late summer he was running the full ARDC Midgets, winning in his tenth start at Hatfield, of all places, and prompting a local paper to predict that he " will probably be the next Eastern pilot to turn up on the Indianapolis speedway" (the quote actually continues: "Andretti was a stock car pilot last year, and not a very good one..." - ouch!).

As for Aldo, it was more of the same at Nazareth Speedway, running consistently at the sharp end of the field and winning several heats, but no main events. Again, he was very probably amongst the top five in points, but not keeping up with Billy Tanzosh, back after missing several races through injury in 1961, and a few others. 1963 was even worse, and he still couldn't find his way into victory lane, although this was at least partly due to Billy Tanzosh reportedly winning 21 (!) Limited Sportsmen main events at Nazareth alone - I can verify "only" eighteen of those wins, though, since some of the mid-week shows (now moved to Wednesday nights) were no longer reported in the newspapers. It's interesting to note, however, that Tanzosh won (as far as I can tell) just one heat race all year, in complete contrast to the "Andretti style" (overall, I have 33 main events and 12 heats for Tanzosh, 8 wins and 14 heats for Mario, but zero wins and 18 heats for Aldo). By now, however, there was an ever widening gulf emerging between the twins as far as their racing achievements were concerned, as Mario was having a real breakthrough year: he was a very strong third in ARDC points (after a 14th during his abbreviated rookie year) with four main event wins, including his famous "three in one" on August 31 (a Saturday afternoon show at the Flemington Fair, followed by a make-up feature for an earlier rain-out and the regular main event at the monthly Hatfield track only a few hours later!) and a rare road race at Lime Rock/CT, an early indication of his versatile prowess. By September, he was ready to throw his hat into the USAC ring, entering a few Sprint car races in Pennsylvania and only narrowly missing out on a points finish - he was ready to go places in a big way!

Want to win a pub bet? Ask, "what year did Mario Andretti win a NASCAR event for the first time", and let your opponent do the bidding. If you're lucky, he'll fancy himself an expert, and your rewards will be rich! From the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties, NASCAR ran a Midget division, and the little cars often raced during Daytona Speedweek at nearby tracks..On Friday before the 1964 Daytona 500, Mario won a five-mile main event at Daytona Beach Memorial Stadium, two years before he ever competed in a NASCAR Late Model race. The next month saw him finishing fifth in the USAC Eastern Sprint car opener at Reading/PA, and in April he was driving an Indianapolis roadster in a National Championship event at Trenton/NJ. After banging on the door all year long, he finally won his first USAC event in October, the prestigious Joe James/Pat O'Connor Memorial at Salem/IN, one of the five richest Sprint car races in the country, finishing a very close third in Sprint car points and taking home over $18,000 in winnings - from here on, Mario's career milestones will be pretty familiar to most readers. In the meantime, Aldo had given up on the Stock cars at Nazareth, and was following his brother's example of racing TQ Midgets at Pine Brook and Wall Stadium in New Jersey, or Dorney Park in nearby Allentown/PA. He did well, too, finishing a "fast-closing" second at Pine Brook August 19, beaten only by Jerry Karl, a four-year ARDC veteran from Long Island taking a step down from the full Midgets on a "free" evening. Karl, of course, would go on to win a handful of URC Sprint car shows and have a fifteen-year career in Indycars, while Aldo could only curse his bad luck on a day when he had all the TQ regulars covered - if only the ARDC had scheduled a race that night!

As the summer of 1964 wound down, Aldo Andretti found himself at a crossroads. His family had grown to five, with two sons added in consecutive years, and it must have been difficult to make ends meet, his moderate racing success notwithstanding. So, when he found a better job at the Dage Electric Co., a subsidiary of the (inter alia) automotive components manufacturer Bendix Corp., which made electrical connectors in Franklin/IN, half an hour south of Indianapolis, Aldo uprooted the family in Pennsylvania and moved to the burgeoning metropolitan suburb of Southport, halfway between downtown and Franklin - it's perhaps the ultimate irony that, with all the world speculating about how long it would take Mario to get to Indy, it was Aldo who arrived there first by half a year. But, of course, this was different: Aldo wasn't there to race at the Speedway, in fact, he gave up racing altogether for a time, didn't race at all in 1965. He was here for a fresh start in hopefully greener pastures, a whole new beginning. And yet, he couldn't fail to notice that Central Indiana was, much like Central Pennsylvania, the hub of yet another racing world, perhaps even more intense than the one east of the Appalachians. The old fire was still burning, and where there's a will, there's always a way, they say...

Before we get to the final chapter of Aldo's racing life, let's wrap up the Nazareth fairgrounds story with a last set of (abbreviated) statistics. Yes, I know... and they're also quite time consuming to compile, but in order to quickly appreciate some salient facts, there's no better way. And also, having already done the necessary (and even more time consuming!) labour of research in the first place, it would not seem economical to leave much of the fruit to simply rot away.

Edited by Michael Ferner, 03 February 2021 - 12:04.

                                       Main Event &     Heat results
   Modified Sportsman division         1  2  3  4  5    1  2  3  4  5

*1 Bob Malzahn       Tampa/FL          1  9  7  2  3    6  2  7  5  3
   Frankie Schneider Lambertville/NJ   9  4  2  1  1    9  8  3  4  3
   Jackie McLaughlin Thorofare/NJ      8  1  3  1  2    5  7  7  2  6
   Al Tasnady        Vineland/NJ       3  2  3  1  -    3  1  7  3  2
   George Sleight    Easton/PA         2  3  -  -  -    5  2  2  2  2
   Budd Olsen        Paulsboro/NJ      2  2  2  2  2    2  3  6  7  2
   Tommy Scheetz     Pottstown/PA      1  2  2  4  2    2  4  6  3  5
   Ken Wismer        Riegelsville/PA   1  1  2  3  3    6  6  3  3  2
   Les Farley        Califon/NJ        1  -  3  2  1    8  4  4  5  -
   Bill Deskovich    Hanover/NJ        1  -  -  -  -    4  -  1  3  4
   Don Stumpf        Ridgefield Park   1  -  -  -  -    2  1  1  -  -
   Carl van Horn     Belvidere/NJ      -  2  1  -  -    2  2  3  3  3
   Sonny Strupp      S. Plainfield/NJ  -  1  -  1  3    -  5  1  1  4
   Charlie Bailey    Blandon/PA        -  1  -  -  1    -  3  1  -  -
   Harry Charles     Easton/PA         -  1  -  -  -    5  1  1  -  2
   Harry Moore       Pottstown/PA      -  1  -  -  -    1  4  3  1  -
   Whip Mulligan     Indian Lake/NJ    -  -  2  2  1    3  5  1  6  2
   Otto Harwi        Easton/PA         -  -  1  4  2    1  6  3  4  5
   Bob Pickell       Flemington/NJ     -  -  1  2  -    2  6  2  5  3
   Dick Tobias       Lebanon/PA        -  -  1  -  -    -  1  -  2  1
   Freddie Adam      Kutztown/PA       -  -  -  1  3    9  2  -  3  1
   Ed Farley         Califon/NJ        -  -  -  1  1    2  -  2  2  7
   Larry Voss        Lambertville/NJ   -  -  -  1  -    1  -  3  -  3
   Hoop Schaible     Upper Black Eddy  -  -  -  1  -    -  2  1  -  -
   Lou Lazzaro       Utica/NY          -  -  -  1  -    -  -  1  1  -
   Leon Manchester   Paulsboro/NJ      -  -  -  -  2    5  -  -  1  2
   Sam Beavers       Oldwick/NJ        -  -  -  -  2    2  4  5  5  2
   Dick Havens       New Hope/PA       -  -  -  -  1    -  2  1  1  3
   Elton Hildreth    Bridgeton/NJ      -  -  -  -  -    3  -  1  -  1
   Spud Murphy       Orlando/FL        -  -  -  -  -    2  -  2  1  2
   Charlie Cregar    Trenton/NJ        -  -  -  -  -    1  4  -  1  1
   Paul Bologash     Tamaqua/PA        -  -  -  -  -    1  1  1  -  -
   Warren Mutter     Boyertown/PA      -  -  -  -  -    1  -  2  -  -
   Tommy McAndrews   Bethlehem/PA      -  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  1  -
etc.

   Limited Sportsman division

   Billy Tanzosh     Nazareth/PA       8  1  -  -  -    4  3  3  2  1
   Bob Brack         Quakertown/PA     5  1  3  -  1    7  2  3  -  -
   Don Loder         Reading/PA        3  2  -  1  1    4  2  -  1  -
   Del Bitting       Reading/PA        3  -  1  -  -    2  2  -  -  -
   Ed Goeke          Princeton/NJ      2  1  2  1  -    6  4  -  -  3
   George Dilworth   North Wales/PA    1  4  3  5  1    3 10  5  4  1
   Bobby Bottcher    Lehighton/PA      1  4  -  -  -    3  -  2  -  -
   John Bright       Hellertown/PA     1  3  -  -  -    2  2  3  1  -
   Harold Reifinger  Laureldale/PA     1  -  -  -  -    1  -  1  -  -
   Leroy Leibensperger                 1  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  -  -
=> Aldo Andretti     Nazareth/PA       -  2  4  2  2    5  4  2  4  1 <=
   Larry Bowers      Hampton/NJ        -  1  1  3  3    1  7  3  2  4
   Blain Sadler                        -  1  1  -  1    -  -  -  -  2
   Ears Mayberry     Pottsville/PA     -  1  -  -  -    1  1  2  1  -
   Bob Garbowski     Flemington/NJ     -  1  -  -  -    -  1  -  -  -
   Del Hahn          Slatington/PA     -  1  -  -  -    -  -  -  2  1
   Charlie Shoudt    Riegelsville/PA   -  -  2  3  -    3  2  3  3  4
   Herb Frenchko     Easton/PA         -  -  2  1  -    1  2  -  -  2
   Fred Fritsche     Hampton/NJ        -  -  1  -  2    3  2  3  2  1
   Russ Ahner        Lehighton/PA      -  -  1  -  -    -  -  1  -  -
   Stan Ploski       Somerville/NJ     -  -  -  1  2    2  2  3  4  1
   Charley Decker    Norristown/PA     -  -  -  1  -    2  3  1  2  2
etc.

* in non-period tabulations Frankie Schneider is often listed as champion

                                       Main Event &     Heat results
   Modified Sportsman division         1  2  3  4  5    1  2  3  4  5

 1 Frankie Schneider Lambertville/NJ  10  4  2  6  -   13  4  1  3  2
   Jackie McLaughlin Thorofare/NJ      4  3  3  -  2    6  9  2  6  2
   Bob Malzahn       Keyport/NJ        3  1  2  -  1    2  4  3  3  4
   Al Tasnady        Vineland/NJ       3  -  -  -  -    5  -  1  1  -
   Will Cagle        Tampa/FL          2  4  5  -  4   12  1  4  1  1
   Bill Deskovich    Hanover/NJ        2  2  5  2  2    4  5  3  1  5
   Budd Olsen        Paulsboro/NJ      1  5  1  1  -    2  2  3  5  2
   Whip Mulligan     Indian Lake/NJ    1  1  1  4  -    2  2  3  -  2
   Wally Dallenbach  East Brunswick/NJ 1  1  1  -  2    1  1  -  2  1
   Dick Tobias       Lebanon/PA        1  -  2  -  -    4  3  -  1  3
   Elton Hildreth    Bridgeton/NJ      1  -  1  -  2    -  2  3  1  -
  *Bucky Bucholtz    Buffalo/NY        1  -  -  -  -    1  -  -  -  -
   Tommy Scheetz     Boyertown/PA      -  2  -  1  2    2  1  7  1  3
   Harry Charles     Easton/PA         -  2  -  -  -    4  3  1  2  -
   Otto Harwi        Easton/PA         -  2  -  -  -    1  5  5  2  4
   Bill Wimble       Lisbon/NY         -  1  2  1  1    2  4  -  3  -
   Sonny Strupp      S. Plainfield/NJ  -  1  1  -  3    3  5  3  3  4
   Danny Mitchell    Middletown/NY     -  1  -  1  -    7  -  3  2  2
   Bob Pickell       Flemington/NJ     -  -  1  4  1    3  3  7  3  2
   Harry Moore       Pottstown/PA      -  -  1  1  -    2  1  2  1  1
   Spud Murphy       Orlando/FL        -  -  1  1  -    -  1  1  -  1
   Ernie Gahan       Dover/NH          -  -  1  -  -    -  1  1  1  -
   Rags Carter       Tampa/FL          -  -  -  3  1    -  2  -  2  1
etc.

   Limited Sportsman division

 1 Billy Tanzosh     Nazareth/PA      18  3  -  -  2    1 10  7  4  1
   Stan Ploski       Hopewell/NJ       5  1  1  -  3   13  1  2  3  1
   Dave Reese        ?/NJ              3  2  1  -  3    3  4  3  3  2
   Bob Brack         Quakertown/PA     1  5  3  2  1    8  1  4  3  4
   Charlie Shoudt    Riegelsville/PA   -  5  3  1  1    1  4  1  2  2
   Don Jones                           -  3  -  4  -    4  2  2  2  3
   Dick Swangler     Trenton/NJ        -  3  -  2  -    3  1  -  -  1
   Stan Rest         Tylersport/PA     -  2  -  -  2    1  2  3  4  1
   Charley Decker    Norristown/PA     -  1  3  1  3    5  2  3  2  -
   Joe Inglin        Raritan/NJ        -  1  1  -  1    4  1  2  -  -
   ? Comstock                          -  1  -  1  -    -  1  -  1  1
   Joe Murray        East Stroudsburg  -  -  2  3  -    2  2  3  1  5
   Joe Csolak        trenton/NJ        -  -  2  1  -    3  2  -  -  -
=> Aldo Andretti     Nazareth/PA       -  -  2  1  -    2  4  -  -  - <=
   ? Babey                             -  -  1  2  1    2  1  1  -  -
   Blain Sadler                        -  -  1  1  -    1  2  1  1  1
etc.

* alias for Ron Lux

Edited by Michael Ferner, 03 February 2021 - 13:13.

In July of 1965, Jim Waltz, a Super Modified driver from Bloomington/IN, bought a racing car with a history: it had been built in 1955 by Vic Ellis of Rockton/IL, near the Wisconsin and Iowa statelines, to be driven mainly on the IMCA Sprint car circuit of the Midwest. Something of a star in the Midget races of the Tri-State area, the bespectacled Ellis found the going rather tough in IMCA competition, and over the next three years the little car with the Dodge Red Ram engine racked up a number of finishes in the lower regions of the top ten, until a fatal accident at Cedar Rapids/IA put an end to that on July 4 in 1958. One or two owners later, the car wound up in the hands of another Midget star (with an Indy 500 past even), Danny Kladis of Chicago, and his sponsor Bob Lockard. When Kladis narrowly failed to qualify for the 1962 Little 500 at Anderson/IN, Lockard sold the car to a man from Indianapolis, Rufus Gray. Quite the archetypal US racing car owner, Gray was a successful businessman, manufacturing hardware and fasteners under the GAPCO Inc. name which made enough money for him to indulge in his hobby, Sprint car racing. He ran the old Ellis/Dodge (not to be confused with the Ellis Bros./Dodge out of Pennsylvania, which Bobby Marshman drove in his formative years) in USAC events with the local veteran George Morris at the wheel, and very little success – it hardly ever qualified for a main event, even after ditching the old Dodge hemi for a state-of-the-art small block Chevy in 1963. Gray suspected a fault in the cockpit, but a revolving door of drivers, including some illustrious names such as Johnny Rutherford and Jud Larson, failed to solve the problem until he put an unknown youngster from Pennsylvania behind the wheel for a race at New Bremen/OH in May of 1964: Mario Andretti. That really transformed the car! Andretti was fourth in his first start, then second next time around, and a winner before the year was out. Gray was so impressed that he had a new car built for Mario in 1965, and put the old one up for sale.

Originally from Paris/IL, Jim Waltz had been around the local (Modified) Stock car racing scene since the early fifties, and had seen it evolve from the jalopy days to the then current Super Modified, the ultimate perversion of the term "stock car". In fact, the only thing he had to do with the purpose built racing car he had just purchased to make it eligible for the races of the South Central Indiana Racing Association (SCIRA) was to bolt on a rollover cage with a thin sheet of metal on top, serving as a "roof"! To be fair, though, by now SCIRA and a few other clubs in the region had begun calling the cars Super Modified Sprints, foreshadowing the future developments. By the mid-sixties, Waltz had won quite a few races, but also crashed often enough to finally decide that he liked working on the cars better than risking his neck week after week, so he began hiring other drivers to perform the more dangerous chores, and when told of someone looking for a ride who not only looked and talked like Mario Andretti, but was an actual and identical twin to the reigning USAC National Champion, Waltz didn't hesitate, and Aldo was suddenly back in business! His family name, which had become something of a burden in the East, for once seemed to help his cause out here in the Midwest, and Aldo began to race regularly on the SCIRA circuit at Bloomington Raceway, Paragon Speedway and Mitchell Speedrome, as well as other area tracks such as Tri-State Speedway in Haubstadt/IN, Lawrenceburg/IN, Eldora Speedway in Ohio and even Greater Pittsburgh Speedway in Western Pennsylvania. Competing against future Indy 500 drivers such as Sheldon Kinser or Larry Cannon, Aldo won the occasional heat race and even a trophy dash at Eldora, but the best main event results I could find for him were two sixth place finishes at Bloomington both, May 27 and June 10 - not enough in the cut and thrust of racing in the backyard of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and by the end of July Aldo had to relinquish his seat to Butch Wilkerson, a Sprint car rookie who had just lost his USAC ride - the old game of musical chairs!

Naturally, that same game also offered opportunities, like when Jim McCune of Toledo/OH, runner-up in IMCA points in 1964, suddenly decided to retire from Sprint car racing during a stop at Terre Haute/IN only a couple of weeks later (though he would, eventually, make a comeback in the seventies). His car owner, Don Friend of East Detroit/MI, himself a promising driver until losing his left arm in a Sprint car accident at Winchester/IN in May of 1964, hired Aldo to race on the remaining IMCA schedule, places like Sedalia/MO, Des Moines/IA, Nashville/TN or Granite City/IL. It was good experience to get, but most observers felt that Aldo had "much to learn", as his car owner put it - a third place finish in a heat race appears to have been his only tangible result. It was also during this period that Mario, by now well established as a leading racing driver in the nation and a prospect for worldwide fame, helped Aldo's case with words, and perhaps money, too. The IMCA promotional machine, never averse to inflated claims, kept pushing the story of how Aldo had led the way in the early days, only to fall behind because of the Hatfield accident which, as Aldo confessed in early 1967, was being made worse every time the story was told. "What makes me mad is that so many people make such a big thing out of the accident. There are lots of drivers running who had much worse accidents than me", the Indianapolis Star quoted Aldo on May 18 that year. Yet, both Andrettis still used the fable of how they raced Formula Junior cars, back in Italy - they had quickly learned that in America, bragging about racing success in faraway locations is par for the course!

Mario also engineered a deal earlier that year to bring Aldo to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a story which really began at Le Mans in 1966, where Mario was paired with the Belgian veteran long distance driver Lucien Bianchi in a Ford GT40, in the hope that his vast experience would be of help to the Le Mans rookie from America. Maybe because of their common Italian descent, the pair hit it off, so much so that Mario promised Lucien help in achieving a secret ambition, namely to drive in the Indy 500. Before it came to that, however, a series of tragic accidents had to pave the way: on September 26 Jim Robbins, a championship car owner ever since buying the eventual winner of the 1950 Indy 500 on the morning of the race, died in a tragic light aircraft accident that wiped out almost his entire family along with a couple of executives of the various companies he owned. Not on board was his firstborn son, Marshall Robbins who now, at 25, assumed control of a business empire as well as a racing team chasing a vain dream to win the Indy 500, or any other championship race for that matter. In fifteen years of trying, that goal had never seemed closer than during the past year, with their bright young driver from Canada, Billy Foster repeatedly knocking on the door of success, only to die in a Late Model Stock car accident on January 20, leaving behind a deeply frustrated team around another young Canadian, chief mechanic Grant King, and the even younger team principal.

Mario Andretti knew King and the team from a race at Langhorne the previous summer, where he had been given the opportunity to drive Foster's backup car in the race after crashing his regular ride in qualifying, and now he introduced them to Bianchi. A deal was struck, and Belgium's finest arrived at Indianapolis in early March for tyre testing, only to be greeted by a speedway covered in snow! Finally, on the Thursday March 9, Bianchi managed a few shakedown runs, limited by his lack of experience and the need to adhere to the rookie speed limit at the track, some four seconds a lap slower than Al Unser in a (reportedly brand new) Mecom team Lola/Ford. Waiting in the wings was none other than Aldo Andretti, apparently a sort of "finder's fee" for Mario in recognition of his part in the signing of the new Robbins shoe! Aldo got the chance to drive 15 laps in the team's 1966 Vollstedt/Ford, albeit under "strict orders to hold down the speed", resulting in unofficial lap times that were about five seconds slower than Bianchi's. Nevertheless, he was soon being mentioned as a junior development driver "on a long-term basis", with a view of having him start in a couple of championship races later in the year - what a prospect! Unfortunately, though, things turned sour very soon: there were no more testing opportunities, and even though he was entered for the Milwaukee championship race five days after Indy, an internal reorganisation of the Robbins team saw him take a back seat - Bianchi had quit after narrowly missing the cut at Indy, and the team decided to stick with what they knew best: local talent, like Jim Malloy of Denver/CO, who had competed against Billy Foster regulartly in Modified races in the Pacific Northwest. A cruel blow for Aldo, as Malloy was not significantly more experienced, although he had duly impressed in the few USAC starts he had made that spring driving Sprint cars, and Midgets in late 1966.

Edited by Michael Ferner, 07 February 2021 - 14:19.

In early 1966, Aldo had stated that he was “aiming for the Indianapolis Speedway within two years”, but despite the teasing experience of testing at the famous oval, that goal remained tantalizingly out of reach, as did further opportunities to race a Championship car: two weeks after Milwaukee, Aldo’s name showed up on the entry list for the Langhorne 100-miler, but without a car assigned to him – what may look like a simple cock-up at first glance was, in fact, a ploy that was occasionally used by popular drivers without a permanent ride in order to advertise their availability in the hire-and-fire atmosphere of US racing. There was a certain logic to it, since Langhorne could be considered a home track on the Championship trail for the Andrettis, but to most observers it had been fairly evident that Aldo had been given the IMS test not based on past racing success, but on his family name alone, so that rather unsurprisingly, nothing came of it. Afterwards, Aldo claimed “that he had never really entered himself and didn’t know who had done it for him”, so perhaps it was Mario again, trying to make things happen for his brother? More successful, in the end, was another deal that had Mario’s name written all over it: Lee Hunter, a mechanic on the Al Dean National Championship winning team in 1965, and subsequently chief mechanic for Gray’s GAPCO Sprint car, purchased a Sprinter brought over from California by Tom Smith, and run in conjunction with Hoosier Johnny Ames for a while until money ran out or the relationship soured, perhaps both. Hunter ran the Smith & Ames car for its original driver, Chuck Booth from California with limited success, until they parted midway through 1967, offering the ride to Aldo, who made good use of it gaining experience and confidence on the USAC Sprint car trail.
 
Remember that photograph of the "dirty half dozen", back in 1959 at Nazareth's Sunoco station? There was a fourth member of that group with a future in the sport, and though you will not find his name in the Encyclopedia of Auto Racing Greats, his legacy in motor racing is far greater than any of the others, arguably even Mario's:
 

 
Meet Larry Slutter (far left), who even got his own TNF thread  when he died in 2016. The youngest of the sextet, Slutter didn't return to Nazareth (except for marrying his high school sweetheart) after his service in the USAF in the early sixties, instead finding a job at Bill Spangler's Garage in downtown Indianapolis, one of the oldest automotive service stations still in business at the time. In short order, Larry became an expert working on high speed engines, and along the way reconnected with Aldo Andretti when the latter moved to the Hoosier capital. He was the perfect go-to guy when, on December 8 of 1967, Mario's Championship car owner Al Dean died in California, and the whole operation was taken over by the two-time National Champion under the name of Andretti Racing Enterprises, with one important addition: a brand new Edmunds Sprint car chassis for Aldo, and a special idea for its motive power!
 
By 1967, about the only difference between Super Modifieds and Sprint cars was the eligibility for pure-bred racing engines in the latter, but since proper racing engines were no longer built in the US since the early fifties (with one notable exception), they were in rather short supply, and state-of-the-art Sprint cars were generally powered by stock block conversions (small block Chevies, almost exclusively), just like the Supers. The only contemporary racing engine available was the DOHC ("quad-cam") Ford, which due to its peculiar design (exhaust ports in the middle of the vee) was practical only for installation in a rear-engined chassis, not in Sprints. To a mechanical mastermind like A. J. Watson, that was a challenge, not a problem. He redesigned and remachined the cylinder heads of one of the quad-cam Fords he owned, and stuffed it into a new Sprint car he was building in his shop in Indianapolis, right next to the shop of Grant King, who was performing the same task in building his new Championship dirt car for Marshall Robbins! Watson and his white #2 were first out of the blocks, and ready to debut at Oswego Speedway in upstate New York, right next to Lake Ontario, on July 16 in 1967. This was the second time USAC brought its Sprint car circuit to this track, a popular joint for Modifieds which raced weekly, and Watson, a legendary figure on the circuit who usually had a line of drivers waiting to get the call, decided it was time for something new and hired the winner of the first race in 1966, Mario Andretti.
 

It was the first time Mario competed in a Sprint car that year (and the first time he raced against his own brother in nearly seven, as Aldo was there with the Hunter=Smith/Chevy #55), but he didn't need a refresher course and dominated the event as he pleased (lapping Aldo several times and, according to one report at least, nearly colliding with him on one occasion! ). Because of his busy schedule, Mario raced the car only once more, but he liked it, and so did Mike Mosley, Bobby Unser and A. J. Foyt, all of whom won a main event with it before the year was out - that car was hot! A quad-cam Ford, however, was beyond the means of most Sprint car owners, especially when it needed a lot of time and money consuming work to even only fit into a car, so there was no widespread rush to get one, but Mario had acquired quite a few of them with the inventory of the Al Dean team, and considered switching to a turbocharged Offenhauser later in 1968 anyway. That's where Larry Slutter fitted in nicely with his plans, and the accomplished engine man was charged with putting a Gurney-Weslake Ford conversion into the new Edmunds Sprint chassis for Aldo to race on the USAC circuit, serve as its chief mechanic and rework a DOHC Ford on the side for use later in the year. That part of the plan worked out beautifully, and on September 1 Aldo was ready to debut the new engine at Dayton Speedway in Ohio.

Unfortunately, a quad-cam Ford can make an already skittish Sprint car outright dangerous, as even Mosley and Unser had found out in '67 when they had had sizeable crashes in the Watson/Ford juggernaut. Aldo's first experience with the new powerplant was all bad, qualifying 35th out of 37 cars, then profitting from a series of crashes in his semi-final to qualify for the main event despite finishing last, and taking 15th in the feature besides drawing a LOT of criticism for his erratic driving. The local Journal Herald of Dayton was especially scathing in its comments, accusing Aldo of getting in the way of faster cars, causing a spectacular crash and "nearly several others", bottom lining it: "He couldn't handle the powerful Ford at racing speeds. Right now Aldo isn't a good race driver. Not good enough to compete with USAC" - and it got even worse: he didn't qualify for any of the remaining races that year, and ended the season early with a spectacular flip at Eldora only four weeks later.

Edited by Michael Ferner, 10 February 2021 - 17:22.

 
The most famous photograph of Aldo Andretti, standing in for a temporarily defaced Mario at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, May 25 in 1969 - so close, and yet so far...

 
Sprint car racing is a tough business – not only is the competition red hot, but it moves along at a pretty fast pace off track, too. Unless there are major accidents delaying proceedings, an entire race meeting is run off in not much more than a couple hours, as race promoters are eager to provide non-stop action for their patrons, while sanctioning clubs are anxious to schedule at least one race every week from spring to fall to maximise earning opportunities for the competing teams. Even if the time can be found, testing between events is almost impossible due to the reluctance of track owners to let fast running cars play havoc with their carefully prepared track surfaces, so every competitor has to make every second count the moment he rolls his car off the trailer. Basic stuff like gear ratios, spring settings and selection of suitable tyres must be accomplished during “hot laps”, generally an hour (but sometimes less) of free practice for everyone, during which drivers and mechanics must also study the weather and its impact on track conditions, besides keeping a watchful eye on the competition. If that’s not enough to keep busy, oversubscribed entry lists generally make for rush-hour conditions on the track, and mechanical failures or accidents during this period can put a team in hectic catch-up mode, or even back on the trailer for an early ride home.

If you’ve dodged all those bullets, get in line for the time trials, which means: one lap to get up to speed, two fast ones to make time, and a slow one back to the pits - this is the one shot that's going to count, so you better have your act together. Depending on entry size and club rules, you should beat at least a dozen of your rivals here right away, or else call it a day already! Suppose you make it into one of the three or four heat races, get ready for three minutes or so of fast and furious race action – make one tiny mistake and you’re likely to go to the end of the field, make another one and you might as well park it. True, there’s always a consolation race, B-final, semi feature or last-chance heat for the unlucky ones, but beware! It just might be chock-full of the really fast guys, trying to atone for earlier mishaps, and if you don’t make it into the top four or five positions it’s “game over, see you next week”. Needless to say, in such competitive surroundings experience is invaluable, and if you don’t have it, it takes a lot of grit and determination to get there. That, and a healthy dose of racing luck!

Larry Slutter was a demon in the engine shop, but his experience as a chief mechanic on the racing trail was pretty limited, and though Aldo was now starting his fourth year in Sprint cars, he was still struggling to come to grips with the powerful Ford engine. As the 1969 racing season commenced, the team failed to make the feature eight times in succession, and when they finally made it by the skin of their teeth for race number nine, a tyre exploded just as the green flag was waving. Six days later, Aldo failed to qualify for even only the consy by very nearly a full second, and the team hit rock bottom: this just wasn’t going to work out. With the racing season half over, and zero main event miles on the clock, Larry and Aldo decided to take a change in direction, to try and get the badly needed experience by running the less competitive IMCA fair circuit in the Midwest. No longer the ultimate "barn-storming" tour it used to be, this club still ran every other day on average during August and September in a curious mix of big State Fair meetings and "pumpkin dates" in small towns, some with barely four-figure populations. It was an exhaustive schedule, meaning even the most professional teams were liable to miss a race or two because of repair or maintenance work, giving the lesser lights an opportunity to spring a surprise.
 
Knoxville/IL (pop. 2,930), Chippewa Falls/WI (pop. 12,351), Wausau/WI (pop. 32,806), Eldon/IA (pop. 1,319), Fargo/ND (pop. 53,365) and Sedalia/MO (pop. 22,847) were the first stops on the tour in the run-up to one of the season's highlights at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines (pop. 201,404) on August 17, a zig-zag tour through the upper Midwest, roughly in a triangle between Minneapolis, Chicago and Kansas City, including the odd overnight trip of 400 miles or so on never ending interstates - not for the faint of heart! Welcomed with open arms by the IMCA, who simply relished the chance to use the name of the Indy 500 winner in advertising, Aldo and Larry hit the trail at Wausau for a Thursday night show August 7, before a good crowd of 4,000 and on a dusty track. "See Aldo Andretti" read the ads and banners, giving him more publicity than even the presence of four-time and defending IMCA Champion (as well as local track record holder) Jerry Richert, back after tumor surgery earlier that summer. They should have kept quiet: Aldo missed a yellow flag, climbed over the rear wheel of another car and bounced off the retaining wall, bending the front axle - embarrassingly, the incident happened during hot laps already and right in front of the grandstand, spelling 'finis' to his efforts for the night!
 
 

Skipping the next two events to regroup and repair, Aldo and Larry went to Sedalia on Saturday, August 16 only to be rained out, which at least gave them an early start for the four-hour trip to Des Moines and opening night of the State Fair. Encouragingly, Aldo made tenth best time in the trials, immediately behind Richert and ahead of future book author Buzz Rose and double IMCA Champion Jerry Blundy, but couldn't qualify in his heat, along with four others ahead of him in the lap times, so it was a start from fifth in the consy, with the first six to transfer to the main - doable, but by no means a sure thing! Going into turn one on the opening lap, Lenard McCarl, the only hometown driver in the field and still at the very beginning of his long involvement with Sprint car racing, spun and forced Aldo into the outside wall where the Edmunds/Ford got tangled up in a fence, the windshield and cockpit covered with blood. Rushed to Des Moines General Hospital with very serious facial injuries including numerous fractures, Aldo spend four nights in intensive care. A bone specialist from Chicago was flown in to mend the fractures, and by the end of the month Aldo was transferred to Robert Long Hospital in Indianapolis, almost within earshot of the Speedway, for plastic surgery on September 2 - exactly 100 days after standing in at the IMS front row photo shoot for a temporarily defaced Mario, who'd received burns in a practice crash four days earlier, Aldo's features were now permanently changed, putting an end to such shenanigans.

Was this the end of Aldo's career? Mario clearly thought so. For years afterwards, he vented the story of how he made Aldo promise him to give up racing while still in hospital at Des Moines. The man himself must have entertained different thoughts, and by December was quoted as saying he'd "probably compete in a limited number of IMCA races" in 1970. Leave it to Mario to find a practical solution: the Indy winner bought Rodger Ward's Firestone store within walking distance of the IMS, and installed his brother as the general manager - that's the sort of job to keep somebody off the streets... er, racing tracks! In later years, Aldo was quoted as saying: "I never actually retired, I just stopped doing it" - mission accomplished, as far as Mario was concerned. He also found a future for Larry Slutter, who "apprenticed" as an Indy chief mechanic at Gene White's dying team in 1972 before entering the engine shop at Vel's Panelli Jones, Mario's new team the following year. For VPJ, Slutter built another dirt track conversion of the quad-cam Ford in 1973, developed a new fuel injection for the turbocharged Offy in '74 and then, as his masterpiece, adapted the Cosworth DFV for Indy car racing in '75. He was good at it, too, and by 1977 was made head of Cosworth Engineering Incorporated, the new US arm of the British company.

Edited by Michael Ferner, 24 February 2021 - 18:37.

Fascinating insight into everyday racing for a lot of American drivers and spectators too. Keep it coming!

Slightly worrying though is that this is TNF and no one challenging Michael Ferner's view of things?

Edited by 70JesperOH, 20 February 2021 - 15:16.

They let me roam freely here as long as I don't piss on the flowers

I will do one more post with a sort of resumé, then I'm happy to discuss

Fascinating insight into everyday racing for a lot of American drivers and spectators too. Keep it coming!

 

Slightly worrying though is that this is TNF and no one challenging Michael Ferner's view of things?

Although I have given Michael The Stink Eye on a few occasions, it is very rare that he is not solid ground when it comes to facts. This gives Michael more than a bit of leeway when it comes to stating his opinions -- or interpretations, if you will -- regarding more than a few aspects of US racing. I may not always agree with Michael regarding some of his opinions, but, generally, I have an understanding as to just how and why he has come to develop them. Not to mention that Michael has over the years emerged to become of the foremost, leading historians on many aspects of US racing. I can easily place Michael in the top tier of historians, past and present, of American racing. Yes, there are times when Michael can become too much of a good thing, but he is easily one of the reasons that I have come to reevaluate the value, legacy, and contributions of TNF in recent years. As with several of the other Bright Lights that have emerged here over the years, Michael would somehow found a way to get heard, but his presence here is one that in my view, has been of great value.

And, yes, I do worry at times that Michael seems to make far more sense than I ever imagined he would some years ago when Fines rampaged through the place. "Mellow" is not a word that immediately comes mind when I think of Michael, but the Millers at Milwaukee seemed to calm him down a bit, putting flowers at ease during that visit.

Thank you, Don. I really appreciate your words!


I will confess that writing these posts has felt like walking a tightrope for much of the time. On the one hand, this was supposed to be an appraisal of the motor racing career of Aldo Andretti, an American racing driver who competed nationwide in various competitive forms of the US racing cosmos, and came tantalizingly close to the “big time” world of the Indianapolis 500 without actually making it, a fate he shares with many other fine drivers who tried but failed to reach this or a similar goal. A straightforward job, on the face of it, and one that has been accomplished many times on this board, by various people, honouring the memory of the deceased ones in the sport we all love. But then, there was this curiosity, fed by remarks I read numerous times, and by my own cursory research into the beginnings of the racing career of his infinitely more famous brother, Mario Andretti, who every so often claimed that Aldo was at the very least his equal, or maybe even the better, faster, more talented one of the two, a view which has been gladly adopted by many writers and followers of the sport. Could it be true? And if not, how was I going to deal with it? Was it even only a reasonable assumption?

Successful racing drivers are a rare breed: for every “name driver” in this sport, there are dozens who get left behind in the dust, nameless extras who often don’t even show up in the reports or results; hundreds and thousands even, depending on how you define ‘greatness’ in motor racing – after all, there’s a wide range of champions in this line of business, from Juan Manuel Fangio to the Otto Harwis of this world! As for Mario Andretti, with all his success in so many different disciplines of racing, and over such a long period of time, it really feels more like he was one in a million racing drivers. And that goes also for Fangio, of course, and without being too picky, we can also say the same about every other World Champion, men like Emerson Fittipaldi, Jody Scheckter or Michael Schumacher for example. (You know what I’m going to say, don’t you  ) What about their respective brothers? Excellent drivers, all of them, but do we really think that Wilson, Ian and Ralf were made of the same, one-in-a-million cloth as their siblings, just a bit less lucky perhaps? Jimmy Stewart, anyone? David Hunt?? No, I’m quite sure we can all agree on the fact that this kind of excellence in racing doesn’t run in families, not to that extent and not in those rarefied heights.

Are we willing to grant an exemption to Aldo Andretti, because he was Mario’s identical twin brother? Where’s the evidence, one might ask: if you google “successful twins in sports”, you get a long list of twins in team sports, and of the few who competed individually, one was invariably much more successful than the other, unless both were pretty obscure anyway – ever heard of Angela and Amber Cope? Me neither, but they are the auto racing example that comes up most often... yeah, really! And besides, of the one famous example in motor racing when two brothers actually made it to the very top (in the US at least), and starting out right about the same time as the Andrettis - Bobby and Al Unser - isn’t it true that they were anything but alike, if not diametrically opposed in both temperament and racing style? Obviously, the odds were very much against Aldo here, and it didn’t take long for my research to show that reality wasn’t much kinder, either.

It’s no secret, I often feel the urge to “set the record straight” whenever I find evidence that runs against the grain of popular opinion, but on the other hand I wasn’t really keen on damning Aldo with faint praise, so there’s a dilemma. Can his story be told without reference to Mario? Technically, yes, but that wouldn’t really address the issues, and leave many more questions than answers on top of it. Besides, it would be a travesty, for let’s face it, any other driver with a comparable record in racing would hardly have elicited more than a two-line obituary in the specialist press or on this board, maybe one paragraph with exceptionally good will (and if you remove the references to Mario from those you have read, that’s what most if not all amount to). There’s no way around it, Mario is the reason why Aldo is remembered the way he is, just go and check the first post in this thread. So, for better or worse, you simply cannot keep Mario out of Aldo’s story, you’ve got to face the music.

And so I did, trying to state the factual findings as plainly as possible, and with as much additional background as possible, which proved to be a challenge even though I had plenty of experience researching weekly Sprint car racing from the sixties onwards. Yet, Stock car racing is a world to itself, and I had much to learn along the way, which conspired to a fairly large article, I’ll readily concede, but I was determined to give Aldo the fair trial that I promised, warts and all, and to let the readers form their own conclusions as Aldo found out the hard way that a famous name can work both ways: he was certainly given chances that others without his background could only dream of, yet was subjected to especially harsh criticism along the way, too. One thing leading to another, that was also one of the reasons he found himself fighting above his own weight too many times, resulting in too many crashes for his own good, and a label that stuck to him like glue, as easily the most frequently uttered verdict of his driving was that he “tried too hard”, a view that was also shared by Mario on quite a few occasions. Some might think of that as a polite way of saying that he was out of his depth, others as a sign of admirable determination - take your pick.

It also contributed to a fairly astounding statistic, namely that he seems to have never won a main event throughout his career, subject to the limitations of my research, of course, though one would like to think that a win should have been much easier to find than all the other results, of which I found plenty. Not really a big issue, as most of us will recall that the same was said about Pedro Diniz, and he didn’t really disgrace himself even in Formula One, giving even the reigning World Champion a run for his money once or twice, but it doesn’t really sit well with the binary winner-loser mentality that’s prevalent in the US, where even the most inconsequential amateur racer who never competed outside of his own city limits, and drove nothing more sophisticated than a Hobby/Economy or Street Stock car, will ultimately be gauged by the number of his feature wins. Another interesting facet of Aldo’s career is that he always seemed to go backwards whenever Mario made another step forward, culminating in his worst season ever in 1969 just when his brother was experiencing his greatest year so far. Based on that, perhaps he shouldn’t have retired when he did, because Mario had some pretty lean times ahead of him in the seventies…

A final thought, based on some fairly innocuous remarks about the respective temperaments of the twins in a seventies newspaper article:
 

The Andrettis are identical twins, but far from identical personalities. Both are friendly, intelligent and articulate. But Mario fights his demons quietly. Aldo has more of what has come to be called the Latin temperament. Both are super competitive. Adversity causes Mario to withdraw; to become more coolly determined. Aldo climbs out from under it like a puppy who fell into a puddle – all smiles and optimism.

 
Looking back over all the articles, the quotes and the photographs that I examined during my research, I paused for a moment and slightly readjusted my view. Maybe there’s a story in there that’s never been told. Maybe we didn’t get the whole picture by listening to the Andretti legend. What if the driving force in those teenage days, when dreams turned into desire, and desire into action, what if it was Aldo leading the way, then? The one most passionate about the sport, with the big unquenchable fire burning in his Latin soul – maybe they didn’t even need to flip a coin, because it was always clear that the one with the biggest desire was going to drive no matter what, and Mario was consigned to play the supporting cast because he wasn’t quite as fanatic about the whole thing, but once given the opportunity to try he was able to move ahead quickly because of his analytic approach. Thinking about it, I can totally buy into that, as it would explain so many things: Aldo’s unwavering enthusiasm and energy even in the face of failure; and Mario’s often expressed, obviously genuine amazement about how fate played her hand (which I previously took to be just another expression of brotherly love, much like Derek Warwick posthumously inflating the talent of his kid brother). That would make Aldo’s story truly akin to a Greek tragedy, that of a Dionysian hero beaten not only by fate, but also by his Apollonian brother!
 
 
Arrivederci, Aldo. I could often sense the pain behind the words, but you never let it dominate your genuine admiration and brotherly love. That is the sign of a True Champion of Life.
 

Edited by Michael Ferner, 23 February 2021 - 20:16.

Edited by Jack-the-Lad, 24 February 2021 - 15:32.