Bricks Of Gold

Mario Andretti’s 1969 Indy 500 Win Changed Racing Forever, in Ways You Might Not Expect.

- John Pearley Huffman

A HALF-CENTURY LATER, IT’S among the most indelible images in American sports. Mario Andretti, a 29year-old two-time USAC national champion, had just won the 1969 Indianapolis 500 and pulled his turbocharged FordV-8-powered Hawk III onto Victory Lane. There, Andy Granatelli, the car’s owner and CEO of STP, looking like a ripe tomato in his STP blazer, planted a sloppy kiss on Andretti’s cheek. That kiss changed American racing.

“He was so dynamic and visible in every way,” Andretti recalls about the Dallas-born Granatelli. “And he certainly paved the way for other brands to follow suit, who saw what he did with a product that’s, you know, not 100 percent necessary. He created a euphoria about STP so that you could not do without it.” And he’d done it by using racing to raise the visibility of his product.