Michael Andretti: CART Champion, Formula One Driver and Team Owner

Michael Mario Andretti was born on 5 October 1962 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the son of four-time IndyCar champion and one-time Formula One champion Mario Andretti. He won the 1991 CART title and 42 races over his career, the most in the CART era. He is one of the most successful American open-wheel drivers in history.

Andretti later became one of the sport's leading team owners. He built Andretti Autosport into a team with four IndyCar Series titles and five Indianapolis 500 wins, and he led its expansion into Australian Supercars, Extreme E and an unsuccessful bid to enter Formula One.

How did Andretti start racing?

Andretti won the Formula Ford championship in 1981 with six wins, and the Formula Super Vee title in 1982, winning six of eleven races. He moved into Formula Atlantic and won the FIA Formula Mondial North American Cup in 1984, his second title.

Andretti was raised in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. His brother Jeff also competed in IndyCar, and his cousin John Andretti raced in IndyCar before becoming a NASCAR regular. His uncle Aldo had raced until an accident ended his career.

He won fifty of his 75 karting races over eight years, and he obtained his SCCA National License in 1980. The Northeast Division Formula Ford title in 1981 came after a series of regional wins, and his Formula Vee races gave him experience in the regional SCCA events of the period.

He also won the opening race of the 1983 Super Vee season before moving up. His international sports car debut came at the 1982 24 Hours of Le Mans, where his Mirage was disqualified eighty minutes before the start, so he never raced. The following year he and his father joined Philippe Alliot in a Porsche 956 and finished third at Le Mans.

Forty-two career wins, and the most laps led at Indianapolis without ever winning the race.

How did his CART career begin?

Andretti made his CART debut in 1983 with Kraco Enterprises. In 1984 he finished seventh overall and fifth at the Indianapolis 500, sharing the rookie of the year award with Roberto Guerrero. He won his first IndyCar race at Long Beach in 1986.

The 1986 championship was a two-man battle with Bobby Rahal. Andretti took the points lead with a win at Milwaukee. A week later, on Father's Day at Portland, his car ran out of fuel on the final lap, and his father Mario beat him by just 0.07 seconds. The finish is still counted among the most dramatic in IndyCar history, and it remained the closest until 1997.

Rahal stayed ahead in the points, and Andretti retired at Tamiami Park with a broken halfshaft. He finished the 1986 season as runner-up, and he again finished runner-up to Rahal in 1987 despite winning the Marlboro 500 that year.

He joined Newman/Haas Racing in 1989 and raced alongside his father. He won two races that season, at Toronto and the Marlboro 500 at Michigan, and finished third in the points. In 1990 Al Unser Jr. won the title while Andretti won five races and four poles, but he finished runner-up again, 27 points adrift at the end.

How did he win the 1991 CART championship?

Andretti won the 1991 CART PPG Indy Car World Series, taking eight of seventeen races and eight poles. He led more than half of the laps during the season, but Rahal pushed the battle all the way to the final round.

His season started slowly, with retirements in the first two events, and the second place at the Indianapolis 500 was a heartbreaker. He then won four of the last five races. At Laguna Seca Rahal retired during the title decider, and Andretti cruised to the championship.

The day before the final race he won the non-championship Marlboro Challenge for a second time. His eight wins in a season tied Al Unser Jr. for the most in CART and IndyCar history.

Why is Indianapolis such a frustrating race for him?

Andretti holds the record for the most laps led in the Indianapolis 500 without winning, with 431. He finished second in 1991 after a late battle with Rick Mears, and in 1992 a fuel pump failure cost him a dominant race.

The Andretti family's misfortune at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is widely called the Andretti curse. In 1984 he shared the rookie of the year award and finished fifth. In 1991 he led with 12 laps remaining, but he finished second after trading late passes with Mears for the lead at Turn One.

In 1992 he dominated the race and led most of its distance. With eleven laps left, and a two-lap advantage in hand, a fuel pump failure ended his run, and he was classified 13th. He also dropped out while leading in 1989, 1995 and 2003.

He competed in 16 Indianapolis 500s, with a top finish of second in 1991, and he led the race nine times. He made his last start as a driver in 2007, when he qualified 11th and finished 13th, but the record of laps led without a win stood.

What happened in his Formula One season?

Andretti's first prospects for Formula One came in 1986, when the Haas Lola team needed a driver for the Detroit Grand Prix. Team owner Carl Haas wanted his CART driver Mario Andretti to take the drive, but Mario recommended his son Michael instead. FISA refused Michael a Super Licence, so the seat went to Eddie Cheever.

He signed for Marlboro McLaren for 1993, to partner triple world champion Ayrton Senna. The deal was announced at Monza during the 1992 Italian Grand Prix. McLaren's Ron Dennis said he believed Andretti could win Grands Prix and become world champion.

The 1993 rule changes cut his practice time sharply. From the start of the season, only 23 laps were allowed in the morning session and twelve in qualifying. That left him little time to learn tracks that were mostly unfamiliar to him.

He crashed at Kyalami and at Interlagos, where he collided with Gerhard Berger at the start. He then qualified sixth at Donington Park but tangled with Karl Wendlinger's Sauber on the opening lap. The next race at Imola, where he again clashed with Wendlinger, is widely seen as the turning point of his F1 year.

At the 1993 Spanish Grand Prix he finished fifth, although his teammate Senna lapped him. He finished in the points on three occasions across the season, and at Monza he held off Wendlinger for third, the best result of his Formula One career. He never fully adapted to the MP4/8. He also commuted from the United States rather than relocating to Europe, which some observers believed hurt his development.

He finished third at Monza, his last Formula One race, and then left the team and the championship by mutual agreement with three races to go. His son Marco later claimed that McLaren had made the car difficult for his father so that Mika Hakkinen, who was paid less, could take his place.

Why did he return to CART after Formula One?

Andretti returned to CART in 1994 with Target Chip Ganassi Racing, and he won his first race back at the Australian FAI Indycar Grand Prix at Surfers Paradise, leading every lap. That win was also Reynard's first in CART. He added the Molson Indy Toronto, taking a record fourth win in the race.

In 1995 he returned to Newman/Haas Racing, won at Toronto and finished fourth overall. In 1996 he was runner-up to Jimmy Vasser with five wins, in a season marred by the death of Jeff Krosnoff and the split with the Indy Racing League.

In 1997 he tried again at Le Mans with his father and Olivier Grouillard, but a night accident forced the Courage C36 out. He never returned to the Sarthe as a driver. In 2000 he won the Firestone Firehawk 300 at Motegi with a Lola chassis, and he also won again at Toronto.

How did Andretti Green Racing come about?

For 2001 Andretti moved to Team Green, because Newman/Haas refused to enter the Indy Racing League's Indianapolis race. He led 16 laps at Indianapolis and was leading during a rain delay. The red flag did not come out at the time, and a puncture and a pit lane incident with Helio Castroneves dropped him to third.

In July 2001 he bought the team and moved the operation into the IRL. It was renamed Andretti Green Racing, and the team won the IndyCar titles in 2004 and 2005 with Tony Kanaan and Dan Wheldon. The team won eleven of the seventeen races in those seasons, including the Indianapolis 500.

In 2007 Dario Franchitti gave the team a third series title in four seasons, along with its second Indianapolis 500 win. Andretti himself had returned to the cockpit at Indianapolis in 2006 to help develop his son Marco, leading with four laps to go before falling to second, then finishing third.

He qualified 11th for the 2007 race and finished 13th, and he announced that it would be his last Indianapolis 500 as a driver. He left the race with the frustrating record of most laps led without a victory.

What has he built since then?

By 2012 the team was racing as Andretti Autosport. Andretti acted as owner and strategist for Ryan Hunter-Reay, whose wins came under his leadership. Hunter-Reay captured the 2014 Indianapolis 500 by a narrow margin over Castroneves, one of the closest finishes in the race's history.

In 2018 he joined Walkinshaw Racing and United Autosports to form Walkinshaw Andretti United, which competed in the Australian Supercars Championship. The team entered Extreme E in 2021.

On 18 February 2022 Andretti applied to the FIA to enter Formula One as Andretti Global. On 31 January 2024 Formula One rejected the bid for 2026, but it left the door open for an entry from 2028. Andretti stepped back from the chief executive role at Andretti Global in October 2024 and kept an advisory role.

What did he do outside racing?

In 1996 he invested in a Toyota dealership in his home state of Pennsylvania. In 2012 he appeared on season 5 of The Celebrity Apprentice as a last-minute replacement for his son Marco, who had withdrawn after the death of Dan Wheldon. Andretti was fired in the fourth episode.

In March 2012 his company took over the promotion of the Milwaukee Mile IndyCar race, and it also promoted other IndyCar and rallycross events.

Andretti has been recognised with several honours. He was a member of the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame from 2002, and he joined the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame in 2012. He has several children from his marriages and lives in Fishers, Indiana.

Career summary by series