Word: andrettis
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...mounted Offy. For patriots, unhappy that foreign "sporty car" drivers in foreign machines have won the last two 500s, there was California's Dan Gurney, who blasted his American Eagle around the track at a fantastic 167.2 m.p.h.-demolishing the four-lap record set last year by Mario Andretti. And; for aficionados of sheer daring, there was Andretti himself...
Still smarting from last year, when an oil leak forced him out of the race on the 27th lap, Andretti watched Gurney break his record, cracked: "It's nice to have something to shoot at"-and tramped on the throttle of his 500-h.p. Dean Van Lines Hawk-Ford. Shooting for 170 m.p.h., Mario came enticingly close-169.7 m.p.h.-on the third of four qualifying laps. Too enticingly. "Let me tell you, that fourth was one thrilling lap," he said later. "I lost it in the No. 1 turn, got straightened out in No. 2, then lost it again...
Winning the pole is not winning the race, of course, and Andretti's toughest competitor on May 30 may well be Parnelli Jones, the 1963 champion, whose controversial new STP Special was the talk of Indy. Powered by a Pratt & Whitney aircraft turbine, the car has no clutch, only two "glow" plugs, can run on anything from kerosene to armagnac, gets twice as many miles per gallon as conventional Indy cars, and is practically soundless-emitting a sort of loud sigh as it ghosts around the track. Jones easily qualified the car at 166 m.p.h., and competitors cried foul...
...Overpower. Andretti has his critics, who think that his schedule-and his tactics-are suicidal. "Sometimes you should wait to pass," says Parnelli Jones, "and Mario often doesn't." Two-time Indy 500 Winner Rodger Ward says that Andretti "has to learn patience; he tries to overpower the competition." But maybe Mario can. He is the early favorite to win next month's Indy 500 in his Ford-powered Dean Van Lines Special; he also will drive a Ford Mark IV sports car at Le Mans in June and, if Sebring was any test, he will probably...
...danger, that is one English word Mario has never been able to understand. In Phoenix, while he was practicing for last week's U.S.A.C.'s Jimmy Bryan 150-mile race, his car went out of control and hit the wall at 130 m.p.h.; Andretti walked away from the wreck with minor bruises. Next day he cracked up again; this time he did not even have a bruise to show for it. "Oh. I've turned over a couple of times, and I've been against the wall," he says. "But I've never even broken...