Mario Andretti’s 1969 Indy 500 Win Changed Racing Forever, in Ways You Might Not Expect.
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.
This story is from the May 2019 edition of Car and Driver.
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This story is from the May 2019 edition of Car and Driver.
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