The Andretti Curse
Motorsport's most famous family has too many aching losses to count.
When Mario Andretti won the Rookie of the Year award following his debut at the 1965 Indianapolis 500 driving his red, white, and blue Dean Van Lines Special, it portended the arrival of a new force of nature. Mario became the youngest-ever IndyCar champion that year and went on to claim the title for DVL once again the next year. Self-promotional fun fact, I have a distant family connection to Al Dean, founder of Dean Van Lines Racing. He’s my great-uncle, related by marriage. He died in the late 1960’s, so I never met him, but his daughter Bonnie told me some very fun stories about growing up with a father who owned a racecar team.
Following Al Dean’s death in 1967, Mario took ownership of DVL Racing’s assets, forming Andretti Racing Enterprises. While he saw success as an owner-driver, including a record-setting number of podium finishes in a single season (that still hasn’t been beaten), he didn’t love the burden of managing a team while driving for it. He was only 27 years old when he took ownership of the team, kept afloat with sponsorship from Firestone Tires and STP Corporation.1 So, in late 1968, he sold Andretti Racing Enterprise’s assets to the Scientifically Treated Petroleum Corporation, crucially, retaining his chief engineer - the legendary Clint Brawner - for the 1969 IndyCar season. It was a dominant season; 9 race victories in total and a record number of points scored (twice as much as runner-up Al Unser). Among those 9 victories was the 1969 Indy 500, cementing his place in motorsport history with a victory America’s crown jewel race.
By this point, Mario was an Indy fan favorite with his suave attitude, charming smile, and expert driving. He’d done it all by the age of 29: won races, won 3 championships, won the Indianapolis 500, and even owned his own team. Surely, this was a man who was going to continue to control the field in IndyCar and collect more Indianapolis 500 victories.
Not quite.
Mario’s luck, specifically at the Indianapolis 500, is so dismal that Indy fans have long pointed to The Andretti Curse as a mystical force that stopped Mario from becoming a multi-time Indy 500 winner. In fact, it’s called the Andretti Curse rather than the Mario Andretti Curse because it extended to family. His sons, Michael and Jeff, his nephew, John, and his grandson, Marco, all ran the Indy 500 multiple times with no victories between them. Cumulatively, the second and third Andretti generations qualified on pole, finished in second or third, and led a combined hundreds of laps at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But despite the literal generations of talent shedding blood, sweat, tears, and motor oil on the IMS asphalt, none were able to put another Andretti face on the Borg-Warner trophy.
A reasonable response to hearing that some drivers weren’t able to make it to Victory Lane at Indy is to shrug and say, “that’s racing.” And that’s completely correct, nobody is owed victory. Most IndyCar drivers will never win the Indy 500 despite trying many times. But the reason the Andretti family earned a name for their dry streak is because they all came so close to victory on multiple occasions, only to often be denied by genuine bad luck. I’m not going to describe each and every Indy heartbreak suffered by the Andretti family since 1965, I’m just providing a highlight reel. If you’re interested in a thorough examination of each and every painful moment, check out this article by Bleacher Report from 2011.
Mario ran in the Indy 500 from 1965 to 1994, an incredible 29 years of driving in circles. Though technically Indy is an oval track, so he’s been driving in ovals. But despite that remarkable longevity, he only managed to finish the full race 5 times. A couple of particularly heartbreaking lightning strikes of bad luck can be found in Mario’s 1968 and 1987 Indy 500 attempts.
In ‘68 he fell to last place at the start of the race as his engine developed an issue with one of its pistons. As was allowed by the rules back then, he hopped in his teammate’s car to continue racing.
The concept of taking your teammate’s car to continue your own race is hilarious. Especially back before you had radio communications between the pit lane and drivers. Imagine you’re Larry Dickson, cruising along, when you see your team holding out a sign from the pit lane telling you to come in. You pull into your spot and see Mario standing there in full race gear and as soon as you put the car in park he yanks you out of your seat, peels off, and ends your Indy 500 attempt. Mario did not actually yoink Larry out of his car, but I imagine that’s probably what it felt like. In any case, Mario was out of the race just a few laps later, his borrowed car suffering the exact same mechanical failure as his original one did. Go figure.
In 1987, Mario looked like he was really going to do it this time. He was going to get his second 500 win an entire 18 years after his first. He had dominated the timesheets during practice, qualified on pole position, and led 170 laps of the 200-lap race. And then his car quit on him with 23 laps left.2 Brutal.
His son Michael, one of the most successful American racecar drivers ever, drove in the Indy 500 from 1984 to 2007. In those 23 years the closest he came to winning the 500 was in 1992. He led a whopping 160 laps of the race and had a very comfortable lead with just eleven laps left. But, like father like son, his fuel pump kicked the bucket and his car rolled to a stop, ceding the lead to Al Unser Jr. I recently wrote about the final ten minutes of the ‘92 Indy 500 as it ended up being the closest-ever finish to the race; just .043 seconds between first and second.
Another of Mario’s sons, Jeff, drove at Indy from 1990-1994, but failed to qualify for the ‘90 and ‘94 races. He never came as close to victory as Mario and Michael but did leave some blood on the track in 1992, crashing hard enough to break both his legs. Funny enough, Mario had broken his toes in a crash during the race just a few moments prior. I imagine the hospital staff had not anticipated treating not one but two Andretti men with broken lower extremities that afternoon.
John Andretti was the son of Aldo Andretti, Mario’s twin brother. John raced at Indy from 1988 to 2011. While he was a talented racer in his own right and found some success in NASCAR, he was never much of a threat at Indy.
Lastly, Marco Andretti, Michael’s son and Mario’s grandson, raced in IndyCar from 2006 to 2025. Marco’s track record is considerably less stellar than his father and grandfather’s. However, he did give the 500 a run for its money on more than one occasion. Arguably his most painful loss was his very first: 2006.
Marco led the race with only two laps to go. Even more exciting, his dad Michael was in second place. A father-son 1-2 would have been instant Indy legend, a likely unbeatable achievement. But Sam Hornish Jr. made a late race hard charge and passed not one but two Andretti men in the closing miles of the race. His final lap pass to take the lead from Marco was the first time in the race’s history someone took the lead in the last lap. It was the second closest finish in the race’s history, as Hornish made the pass in the last 100 yards of the 500-mile race.3
The unlikelihood of this recurring nightmare of disappointments is why so many fans claim that the family must be cursed. Mario himself has said he doesn’t buy it. He told Robin Miller, longtime IndyCar reporter, “Indy has always been a blessing for me and my family. I mean it. It’s a tough place and, sure, it’s been disappointing many times, but we love it. And I’ll never endorse that bulls--t about a curse.”
So, what do you think? Is the most famous family in racing actually hexed? Or is it just a genuinely historic recurrence of bad luck. Does lightning strike the same place twice? What about sixty times? The 2026 Indy 500 will be the first in 46 years without an Andretti on the track. That absence is an equal shame to the lack of Andretti success at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.