John Andretti grew up thinking his first name was Other. As in, The Other Andretti. But, as the nephew of Mario and the cousin of Michael, John established quite a career for himself. He won in Indy cars. He won in the NASCAR Cup Series. He won the 24 Hours of Daytona. He raced NHRA Top Fuel dragsters. He won on dirt tracks in midgets and sprint cars.
He also was the first to do “The Double” by racing in the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and then flying to Charlotte Motor Speedway for the NASCAR Coca-Cola 600 on the same day in 1994. He was a racer. If it had wheels and an engine, he was willing to race it.
John was diagnosed with colon cancer in January 2017. He fought the disease, gutting through gruesome surgeries and treatments while also raising awareness of the need to get routine colonoscopies with the program called #CheckIt4Andretti. He passed away on Jan. 30 at his home near Charlotte, N.C.
Here is an excerpt from his autobiography, RACER, as told to writer Jade Gurss. Ten percent of all proceeds from the sale of RACER are being donated to John Andretti’s chosen charity, the Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis. You can pre-order the book from Octane Press at OctanePress.com. (If you pre-order before June 21 from Octane, you will be invited to a private Zoom chat with Mario Andretti, John’s son Jarett, and co-author Jade Gurss on June 23.)
I had been racing midgets in 1983, but USAC was good about helping drivers get into sprint car rides. Car owner Ben Bowen had asked, “Who do you think is out there that can run a sprint car?” Someone said, “Why don’t you run Andretti?” That was my first taste of a sprint car, which is the bigger, faster and meaner brother to a midget. I was also a full-time college student at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa. Every week, I made the 1,350-mile round trip commute from there to Indianapolis to race.
The first time I flipped a sprint car was at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. In those days, a slide job was considered pretty dirty. It was almost the same as running into a guy or giving him the finger. It was plain dirty. Now, it’s accepted. I’m going to slide you, you’re gonna slide me … Back then, it was not cool.
I was very late into the corner and all of a sudden, I caught a glimpse of Larry Martin. “Holy crap!” He was really late, trying for a slide job and ran straight into me. He hit me like a ton of bricks and I flipped hard. My car was so damaged, they couldn’t find one of the shock absorbers!
I climbed out of the car and laid down on the track. I heard my dad’s (Aldo Andretti) voice.
“Hey, Dad,” I said. “Go stand in front of the guy who just hit me!”
“Why?”
“So I can punch him!”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“Because I can’t see!”
My pupils were so dilated, all I could see was white.
“Awww … don’t worry,” Dad said. “He’s worse off than you.”
The oil tank was under the seat and I hit it so hard that the back of my foot looked like the front of my foot. It had a huge growth and was swelling. I had black-and-blue marks over my shoulders from the seat belts. I had red eye — my eyes were red from burst blood vessels. Technically it’s called a subconjunctival hemorrhage.
I went back to my parents’ house and planned to drive back to college the next morning. I climbed out of bed and started to take a step. Snap! That quickly, I was on the ground and got really nauseous. I crawled to the bathtub and turned on the cold water to get my bearings about me. What is wrong with me? I had vertigo really bad.
I had to be touching something. If I was touching something, I had no problem. So, I had to park my car where I could walk along other cars to stay upright. As long as I was sitting and driving, I didn’t have it. At school, I had to run my hand down the wall to get to class. I was wearing sunglasses to hide my eyes, even for the night classes. My professor asked, “Mr. Andretti, is there really a need for those sunglasses?” I told him they were for his benefit, not mine. So I took them off. He asked me to put them back on.
My dad, Aldo, was the only one who knew. “Dad, you’ve gotta help me walk to the sprint car.” He would walk next to me and I’d just hang onto his belt. I don’t think people noticed. Once I got to the car, I could grab the roll cage and climb in and race. Dad would be there when I got out. Otherwise, I would just fall. We did that for about two weeks, and then it went away.
I got paid driving the midget and the sprint cars. That’s how I paid for college. Paid for the gas to go back and forth. Whatever expenses I had, I paid for with prize money from dirt racing. If I had enough dirt-track races scheduled and then got an opportunity to run a road race, I would do it. The opportunity for road racing is so narrow.
It’s really expensive and you don’t get that many opportunities. For me, one Super Vee race was worth giving up three dirt races. But for road racing, the best you could expect was them paying your expenses. That’s almost like being a paid driver. I knew that the days of a dirt-only driver getting a shot at Indy were gone. Road racing had become the new pathway to the Indianapolis 500.
My final year of college, I had 17 races in the month of May. So, I went to my dean, Martha Reid. She was the one who was always asking, “What are you doing?” I would get called to her office because I was not in class. I sometimes had to skip at least one class each week, but I always ended up on the dean’s list. I got the grades, so it was difficult for them to be too hard on me.
“What can I do?” I asked her. “No racing, no school. One is paying for the other.”
She knew the story, because it was the exact same for years.
“You can go to your professors and ask if you can take your exams early,” she told me. “But, how do we know you’re not going to tell other students what’s on the exams?”
“How stupid do you think I look?” I laughed. “If I tell them anything, it would be the exact opposite so that my grades are better.”
“Yeah, I can see that about you,” she sighed.
“The minute I put my pencil down for the last time, I will be out of Pennsylvania and gone,” I said.
So, I went to all my professors and took the exams two to three weeks early. I didn’t go to my graduation ceremony because I was racing, but I got my bachelor’s degree in business management.