Winner’s Circle Has Been Broken

INDIANAPOLIS — Only nine drivers have won a NASCAR Winston Cup race and an Indy car race.

John Andretti is the only one of them still active. He won the opening Indy car race in Australia in 1992, and he won at Daytona Beach in the Pepsi 400 stock car race last month.

“There’s no comparison which was the greatest accomplishment, it was the NASCAR win far and away,” Andretti said on the eve of today’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “NASCAR is so difficult to win--it is so competitive just to be a contender--to win at Daytona was just tremendous.”

Andretti’s roots are in Indy car racing. His uncle Mario had been a legend for 25 years and his cousin Michael a contemporary champion when John startled the racing establishment in 1993 with his switch to stock cars.

And his debut, at North Wilkesboro, N.C., although memorable, was hardly successful. After starting 31st and finishing 24th, he said, “I felt like a pinball.”

He drove 108 NASCAR races before winning.

“I hope it doesn’t take that long for my second one,” he said. “I felt like we were ripe to win before we finally did it. We let one get away from us at Daytona [in the 500 in February] and we ran a strong fourth at Talladega after we qualified on the pole.”

In the Pepsi 400, Andretti and Mark Martin battled for the lead in a pair of Fords over most of the last 150 miles, then Andretti, with the help of a drafting push from Bill Elliott--who was a couple of laps down--squeezed past Martin with 23 laps remaining and held off Terry Labonte, Sterling Marlin and Dale Earnhardt for the victory.

“Without Bill’s help, I couldn’t have done it on my own,” Andretti said. “Of course, Mark was getting a push from Michael Waltrip, but it wasn’t until Bill closed up behind me that I could get enough speed to pass Mark.”

When two 3,400-pound stock cars are running nose-to-tail at more than 175 mph on the high banks, their speeds are faster than one car running alone.

“After the race, Bill told me, ‘You deserved to win, you had the best car. Besides, those other guys have won enough races.’ ”

As a thank-you, Andretti sent Elliott a catalog, telling him to pick out a TV set from his RCA sponsor, and a team cap with No. 98, Andretti’s car number.

“I’d buy him a house if he wanted it,” Andretti said.

Andretti compared winning his first Winston Cup race to having his first child.

“At first, you don’t know what to expect, waiting until it happens,” he said. “Then, when the big day finally arrives, it changes your life forever. That’s the best way I can explain what it means to win your first race.”

Andretti has two children, Jarrett, 4, and Olivia, 2.

The Indy car win in Australia did not prompt the same feeling, he said.

“We had a new team, it was the first race of the season and at best, we had a third-place car, yet we ended up winning when some of the other guys, especially Rick Mears, had their troubles.

“Things just fell our way. At Daytona, we deserved to win.”

One of the first to try to congratulate John on his Daytona win was his uncle Mario, but he couldn’t get through. John’s father, Aldo, is Mario’s twin brother.

“My voice mail was filled up before I got to Victory Lane,” John said. “Mario called and called, but every time the voice mail was filled up. Finally Jeff [Mario’s son] got through and I got to talk with Mario too.

“He was watching a rerun of the race, and we talked for about 20 minutes. He ended up telling me what it was like for him in 1967 when he won the Daytona 500.”

That was Mario’s only NASCAR victory to go with his 52 Indy car victories and his Formula One championship.

The seven other Winston Cup-Indy car winners: A.J. Foyt, Dan Gurney, Parnelli Jones, Mark Donohue, Jim Hurtubise, Johnny Rutherford and Johnny Mantz. Only Foyt, Gurney and Jones, all of whom won at Riverside International Raceway, won more than one NASCAR race.

John Andretti lives in Indianapolis and has a wealth of experience on the 2.5-mile oval but says his off-track knowledge outweighs his on-track experience.

“I know where the bathrooms are, I know where the police stake out for speeders and I know all the back roads in, so I guess I’d say I have an advantage,” he joked.

This will be his fourth Brickyard race, after having run seven times in the Indianapolis 500. He is the only driver to have led in the Indy 500 and the Brickyard 400 in the same year, a feat he accomplished in 1995.

“As far as I’m concerned, the Brickyard is still an unknown,” he said. “In an Indy car, I’ve had enough good cars here and enough bad cars that I know what I want in a car and I know how to get there.

“In a stock car, I don’t think I’ve ever hit a set-up that I really want. In a good Indy car, you just go around, hold it wide open and steer. The biggest difference in a stock car is that you can drive it in too deep, or you can drive it in not far enough.

“You’ve got to back off and you’ve got to brake at Indy [in a stock car], but I think everyone has decided that shifting doesn’t really work here. Nobody does it anymore. It’s been three years and the guys are still trying to figure it out.”

Andretti would love to win today’s race, but his Indy car roots still are showing.

“It would be tremendous, as a Winston Cup driver, to win the Brickyard and the Daytona 500, but the Indy 500 will always be my greatest goal,” he said. “I grew up a few miles from the track and dreamed about racing here as far back as I can remember.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Facts

* Where: Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 2.5-mile semi-banked paved speedway in Indianapolis.

* When: Today.

* TV: Ch. 7, 1 p.m. (delayed).

* Defending champion: Dale Jarrett.