Andretti calls IRL cars “stupid”

When were you last in a race car?

"It was the Minardi F1 two-seater in October in Edmonton. It's really great fun . . . that car is kick-ass. As far as real race cars go, the last time was 2003 in Michael's car. It was at Indianapolis, and I got upside down. It was a fluke, really. What are you going to do? What sent me up into the air, ironically, is that I hit a chunk of the SAFER barrier. It was in the middle of the track.

"Those stupid IRL cars, they have the nose-up thing. It was a perfect scenario for that to happen. According to telemetry, it took 84 g's to "unstick" the car; my exit of turn one was 222 mph. I had no warning. By the time I saw it, I was coming in full boat–my idea was to get a tow for a couple of laps from Kenny Brack to put up a big number on the board. I had no idea he had exploded an engine and hit the wall. You just don't have that information when you're testing. It was just a weird thing.

"It was a blessing the way it landed [wheels down]. If it had landed upside down, I would have had a headache for a long time [laughs]." Mario Andretti in AutoWeek Q and A