CURSED AGAIN! : For Mario Andretti, This 500 Field Was Duck Soup; Lady Luck Is Another Matter

Mario Andretti was almost letting himself think that this year it was going to be different.

He knew better, of course, than to really count on anything, but it was late in the race and he was a lap up and his car was running with the steady precision of an electric train.

“It was the best car I’ve ever had here,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Just take care of this baby. Just bring it home.’

“That’s exactly what we were talking about, what we were trying to do. We had everything mapped out, our strategy, what we were going to do. We even were going to put on a set of (nicely broken in) tires that we had already run--the tires worked absolutely perfect--at the end.

“We were set. Everything looked good. We were going the safest way possible.

“I think I had every reason to feel that way. I’ve never gone that far into a race and broken down like this. Usually when an engine goes that far, over 450 miles, you’re not going to break down.”

Usually.

Usually when Andretti loses here, he does it lots earlier. In 21 races here, he had led 290 laps but in only 10 had he gotten as far as halfway, and he had finished only 5, among those the 1969 race, which, in a break with his Indianapolis tradition, he won.

But usually is an empty word at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where more races are lost than ever are won and failure--sometimes spectacular failure--is a common reward for a month of hard work.

So, when track announcer Tom Carnegie told the throng here for the 71st running of the Indianapolis 500 Sunday that Mario Andretti, who had set the early pace and had led from the 98th lap on, was a lap ahead of second-running Roberto Guerrero with 25 laps to go, it apparently was a signal.

Suddenly, Andretti’s Chevrolet-powered Lola was out of power. Obviously, somebody had cut the electric train’s current. There was Andretti, on the track apron, under the yellow line, coasting, around, trying to make it back to the pits.

Just as suddenly, Andretti had that familiar sinking sensation. That, at least, was usual.

“I assumed it was (something serious),” Andretti said. “Whenever something goes, it’s always bad enough to take you out of the running.”

What had happened was a sudden malfunction in the car’s fuel-metering device, which regulates the flow of fuel to the engine.

“I had no warning whatsoever,” he said. “It happened between turns 3 and 4. I was at full throttle and all of a sudden it just, pffftt , big backfire. There’s obviously something wrong whenever it does that. It’s not a good sign.”

Still, hope springs eternal in the breasts of race drivers and even while his mind was telling him that the end was near, Andretti’s heart was telling him that maybe it wasn’t. Instead of pulling right into the pits, he went on by them.

“I just figured, ‘Well, let me see if I can diagnose this thing a little bit better.’ At that point I wasn’t just going to come in. So I went around and I was lucky, actually, that I was able to come all the way around.”

What, in effect, has happened was that the computerized metering unit had allowed the engine to flood.

“The engine just stopped,” Andretti said. “I couldn’t keep it running. It was just getting too much raw fuel. The fuel (injection) was not regulated anymore. A seal or something went.”

And lest anyone jump to the conclusion that his car’s new Ilmor Chevy engine had faltered, Andretti hastened to assure that such was not the case at all.

“It wasn’t a fundamental part of the engine, it was an accessory part,” he said, preserving the pride and dignity of Chevy owners everywhere.

“I’m very disappointed,” Andretti said. “Not only for myself but for the team. They gave me the perfect car to drive, not only today but for the whole month. After 10 laps, I could feel the measure of the competition and I knew, unless something drastic happened, we had it covered.

“I drove the car as smooth as I could. Knowing the lead, the cushion, that I had, I didn’t want to change things. I was trying to be very smooth on the throttle. I think I was as easy as I possibly could be.

“When I came up in traffic, obviously, there was no need for me to take unnecessary chances. The car was working and I could just drive by the slower traffic without too much drama.

“There was no one who could challenge us today. I truly felt I was in control of the situation.

“I was in a rhythm, like. It seems like you still go fast but you don’t take anything out of the car. I had no problem holding them back. You could see, I was building a lead up to 15-20 seconds but every yellow (caution period) was robbing me. I should have been three laps ahead.”

Brave words, and true, but Andretti has been around much too long to really figure on anything in any race, much less this one.

“I’m always cautiously optimistic but I’ve lost a lot of races, a lot of championships,” he said. “I’ve had these disappointments in the past. That’s why the victories are so sweet. It just doesn’t come easy, no matter how it appears.”

Not here, it doesn’t. Not for Mario Andretti. Not even when he does everything right. It kind of makes you wonder what he did wrong in 1969.