Awesome Andretti!!!!!

SECOND IN A FIVE-PART SERIES ON FEBRUARY RACING AT DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.

   Bob Moore, my friend of 40 years and a former Charlotte Observer collegeaue, was sure of it.

   If Mario Andretti didn't wreck on the current lap, he surely would the next.

   Bob's assessment was shared widely across the press box at Daytona International Speedway on Feb. 26, 1967, as the Daytona 500 roared on.

   "Mario's car was sideways through every turn," Moore recalled this week.  "It didn't seem possible that he could keep holding it lap after lap."

   This view also held in the pit of the storied Holman & Moody team that was fielding the Ford driven by Indy-car star Andretti, an interloper into the NASCAR Series.

   "We thought he was a wreck waiting to happen," remembers Waddell Wilson, a Holman & Moody team member who had built the engine powering Andretti's No. 11 Ford.  "I have been going to races for more than 50 years, and I have never seen a driving performance like Mario put on that day 40 years ago."

   Andretti was just 26 at the time and he still had a distinctive touch of  native Italian in his voice.

   His English might not have been so good, however, there was no doubt about his driving talent.

   "If there ever has been a natural, it's Mario," said Waddell Wilson.  "Everyone could see it.  He had been racing since he was 13 back in Italy.I"

   Wilson, a hall of famer as an engine-builder/ mechanic/crew chief, and now serving as a consultant to JeriCo Transmissions, chuckled at the recollection.

   "I had built a bunch of engines for the '67 Daytona 500," he recalls.  "I had engines for Fred Lorenzen and Dick Hutcherson. 

   "At the last minute Ford sent word down from Detroit that they wanted a little bit tunnel port adjustments for the cars of Freddie and Mario.  I made the changes and they looked good on the dyno.

   "I loaded the engines on a tractor-trailer and drove through the night from Charlotte to Daytona Beach.  After I got there we put the engine assigned to Mario on the dyno again.  It durn near immediately lost the cam bearings.

   "I had to totally disassemble that engine and redo everything.  I drove through the night back to Charlotte to put it back together, then returned to Daytona the next day.

   "We got the engine in for practice, and it performed really well.

   "Plus, the great old chassis specialist and crew chief Jake Elder and Ralph Moody were working together to get the car set up like Mario wanted it.

   "It was radical, what Mario suggested, but they went along with him.

   "Mario knew what he was doing.  No one could run with him.  For his style, he had the perfect race car, and he ran the wheels off of it.  He made a statement that day.  He was the class of the field."

   Andretti took the lead on the 168th of the 200 laps onthe fast 2.5-mile track and stayed ahead the rest of the way, averaging 146.926 mph.

   Andretti was 22 seconds ahead of nominal teammate Fred Lorenzen when a caution flag slowed the 500 for the final two laps.

   Initially, Mario thought the yellow might cost him the race.  Jerry Grant and Jim Hurtibise tangled in the fourth turn and slid to the apron, covering the track in thick smoke.

   "I couldn't see the cars.  I had no idea where they were," said Andretti.  "I just went as close to the wall as possible and hoped a car wouldn't be there.  I had no control over the situation.  I just prayed and hoped.  I made it, with luck.  I couldn't see a thing and then the air was clear.  I sure was glad to see that grandstand."

    Despite the scare, Andretti adopted another view later.

  "Oh, that caution helped out," conceded Andretti, later a winner of the Indy 500, The Formula 1 Championship and the 24 Hours of Daytona.  "I was just about out of gas.  I pedaled around the final 5 miles.  And I didn't want Freddie Lorenzen pulling up there and being able to draft me.  He might have outsmarted me.  Besides, drafting scares me."

   "Mario is too gracious," said Waddell Wilson.  "That Daytona 500 was his as long as he could keep from going completly sideways in the turns, which didn't seem possible and still amazes me to this day."

   A few moments of silence then followed during  my phone conversation with my boyhood friend Waddell Wilson.

    Finally, he spoke with the deepest sincerity:

   "It's 40 years later, half of our lifetimes, and I have won several Daytona 500s.  None was more enjoyable than that one in '67 with Mario Andretti.  I will remember it forever.

   "He's as good a person as I have ever worked with in my life, bar none."

COMING NEXT: CALE YARBOROUGH SCORES A VICTORY IN THE 1977 DAYTONA 500.