The name “Andretti” is synonymous with auto racing and when you think of an IndyCar legend, you think of Mario Andretti.
The 1969 Indianapolis 500 winner is one of just two drivers to win races in IndyCar, Formula One, World Sportscar Championship and NASCAR (the other being Dan Gurney). He has also won races in midget cars, sprint cars, and drag racing. At Indianapolis, he earned the distinction of becoming the first driver to eclipse 200 miles per hour when he accomplished the feat while practicing for the 1977 Indy 500.
During his career, Andretti won four IndyCar titles (three under USAC-sanctioning, one under CART), the 1978 Formula One World Championship, and IROC VI. To date, he remains the only driver ever to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969), Daytona 500 (1967) and the Formula One World Championship. Along with Juan Pablo Montoya, Andretti is the only driver to have won a race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Formula One and an Indianapolis 500. No American has won a Formula One race since Andretti's victory at the 1978 Dutch Grand Prix.
Andretti was a winner of 109 races on major tracks, including three 12 Hours of Sebring (1967, 1970, 1972) and the 1972 24 Hours of Daytona. He was the only person to be named United States Driver of the Year in three decades (1967, 1978, and 1984) and one of only three drivers to win races on road courses, paved ovals, and dirt tracks in one season, a feat that he accomplished four times.
With his final IndyCar win in April 1993, Andretti became the first driver to win IndyCar races in four different decades and the first to win automobile races of any kind in five. In 2000, the Associated Press and RACER magazine named him Driver of the Century. Ten years later, the Hall of Famer was honored by the IZOD IndyCar Series when they awarded its inaugural road and street course champion the Mario Andretti Road Course Trophy.
|
Arie Luyendyk is a two-time winner of the Indy 500 and known throughout the auto racing circuit as the fastest man to have ever raced at Indy.
In addition to his wins in 1990 and 1997, Luyendyk owns the single-lap qualifying record speed of 237.498 mph and 4-lap qualifying average record speed of 236.986 mph, set back in 1996. Despite his record-setting performance, Luyendyk did not win one of his three Indy 500 pole awards in 1996 as he was a second-day qualifier that year. His poles came in 1993, 1997 and 1999, with his 1997 speed of 218.263 way off his record-breaking speed of 1996 because the Indy Racing League banned turbochargers and opted for 4.0-liter normally-aspirated engines to control speeds.
Luyendyk also captured the record for fastest average winning speed of 185.981 mph when he claimed his first Borg Warner Trophy in 1990. In 17 all-time Indy 500 starts, Luyendyk amassed over six million dollars in earnings and was honored as the 1985 Rookie of the Year and 2002 Scott Brayton Award winner.
Outside of the Indy 500, the 1985 CART Rookie of the Year went on to start 170 CART/Champ Car/IndyCar races with seven wins, fives poles, 35 top-five and 81 top-10 finishes. He has also experienced success in many different forms of racing, such as winning the 1989 12 Hours of Sebring and the 1998 24 Hours of Daytona, and racing as the IndyCar representative in the International Race of Champions (IROC) series.
|
Johnny Rutherford is one of nine drivers to win the prestigious Indianapolis 500 race at least three times. Affectionately known as “Lone Star JR,” the IndyCar legend captured “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” in 1974, 1976 and 1980. In his last two Indy 500 victories, Rutherford started from pole position.
Throughout his racing career, which started driving modified stock cars at the Devil's Bowl speedway in Dallas in 1959, Rutherford totaled 27 IndyCar victories and 23 pole awards, while posting nine straight seasons with at least one win. He owns 157 top-10 finishes in 318 career IndyCar starts. He had five victories in the 1980 season en route to the National Driving Championship in IndyCar. He has had success on the IMCA sprint car circuit, in USAC competition and in NASCAR.
In fact, the very first time he was behind the wheel of a stock car, he was the fastest qualifier for the 1963 Daytona 500 with a world record speed – the same season he had his first Indy 500 start. Rutherford set an all-time IndyCar qualifying lap speed record of 215.189 mph at Michigan International Speedway in 1984 and two years later became the first driver to win all 500-mile races.
Rutherford has long been recognized as one of the greatest Ambassadors of Auto Racing. He has represented many companies, and made many radio, print and TV commercials. He has also been an auto racing TV Analyst for NBC, ABC, CBS and ESPN and was inducted into the Auto Racing Hall of Fame in 1987. Eleven years later he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame and the Motorsports Hall of Fame in America. Today, Rutherford can be found piloting the pace car at all IndyCar-sanctioned races.
|
Johnny Rutherford
Three-Time Indy 500 Winner
1974, 1976, 1980
Arie Luyendyk
Two-Time Indy 500 Winner
1990, 1997
Mario Andretti
One-Time Indy 500 Winner
1969
|
