Michael Carries Andrettis’ Luck Around With Him Like an Anvil : Auto racing: Like father, like son, who runs into the curse--and the Turn 6 escape road--twice while in contention.

Don’t look now, but the dreaded Andretti curse appears to be in full gruesome flower.

And spreading.

It used to apply primarily to Mario Andretti, patriarch of the racing family, and mostly at Indianapolis, where “Mario Andretti is slowing down!” became as familiar as “Gentlemen, start your engines!”

Mario is retired from Indy car racing now, but son Michael, the 1991 series champion and dominant driver during practice for each of the four Indy car events this year, apparently has inherited it.

Basically, the curse prevents Andrettis who are dominant before a race from winning--and in extreme cases from finishing--it.

That’s how it was Sunday in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, and that’s how it has been for Michael all season. He has sat on the pole for three of the four races run, has led 176 of 460 racing laps and has only one podium finish to show for it, a second last Sunday at Phoenix.

This weekend, he was fastest in every practice and qualifying session. But the curse kicked in Sunday morning, during the final warmup session, and then, Andretti confessed, he made the worst of a bad situation.

Engine glitches in his Lola-Ford during the warmup dictated an engine change.

“It was a big mess,” Andretti said.

And it didn’t help.

“(After the engine change,) I was really down on power,” he said. “The whole race, I couldn’t pass anybody. I was so slow in the straightaways. . . .”

That became evident at the start, when Andretti’s teammate, Paul Tracy, got the jump on him before the green flag fell and led him down the main straightaway. The jump generated a yellow flag, and the race got off to a proper start the next time around, Andretti leading the first 17 laps.

But by then, Al Unser Jr. was feeling his horsepower. Both ducked into the pits on a yellow flag, and Unser breezed past Andretti on the restart as the green flag waved.

“He just went right outside me,” Andretti said. “I just didn’t have any straightaway speed. I could barely pass lapped cars.”

On Lap 55, Andretti complicated his day.

Running second, he tried to pass Unser and wound up going down an escape road when his tires failed to grip in Turn 6, a 90-degree corner.

“I tried to pass Junior on the outside and went real wide on the (back) straightaway and got a bunch of dirt on my tires,” he said. “Then when I went to brake, they wouldn’t stop. I just went straight.”

That excursion dropped him to sixth, so it was a bit of a surprise when, late in the race, Andretti was back in second, five seconds behind Unser. That was mostly because of attrition in the ranks, but there he was, gaining slightly.

And then he let his competitive juices get the better of him.

“With about 25 laps to go, I lost first gear,” he said. “I was losing a lot of time coming down the front straight because that’s where you need first gear, coming out of the hairpin.

“I thought I’d be OK for second, but then it seemed like Junior was starting to have problems (he wasn’t, Unser said. He was just conserving his car), so I started to attack a little more. I just drove too hard and spun.”

And visited the escape road again at Turn 6 with only four laps left.

“It was really a shame,” Andretti said. “This one was really disappointing because I made a mistake at the end. I should have been satisfied to collect second and went for the win instead.

“I know if I would have had first gear, I could have caught him and passed him.”

But apparently the Andretti curse isn’t satisfied to mess up fast-running race cars. Now it’s playing mind games too.

And if Unser’s Penske team has solved its early season problems, as Sunday’s race would seem to indicate, Andretti may not have such an easy time the rest of the way dominating even in practice.

“I’ve got to get in that point-collecting mode, I guess,” he said.