Andretti put on display NASCAR will never forget

UPDATE A reader writes, Dear AutoRacing1.com, It was interesting that you had that nice piece about Mario Andretti's victory at the 1967 Daytona 500. That race will always be extra special to me because that was my very first race and that one got me "hooked on racing". Since then I have been to a bunch of very good ones but that one will always be special. Doug Ferguson, Florida

01/10/07 This story by Tom Higgins about the 1967 Daytona 500 is a great tribute to America's greatest ever race car driver.

Bob Moore, my friend of 40 years and a former Charlotte Observer colleague, was sure of it.

If Mario Andretti didn't wreck on the current lap, he surely would the next.

Bob's assessment was shared widely across the press box at Daytona International Speedway on Feb. 26, 1967, as the Daytona 500 roared on.

"Mario's car was sideways through every turn," Moore recalled this week. "It didn't seem possible that he could keep holding it lap after lap."

This view also held in the pit of the storied Holman & Moody team that was fielding the Ford driven Indy-car star Andretti, an interloper in the NASCAR Series.

"We thought he was a wreck waiting to happen," remembers Waddell Wilson, a Holman & Moody team member who had built the engine powering Andretti's No. 11 Ford. "I have been going to races for more than 50 years, and I have never seen a driving performance like Mario put on that day 40 years ago." More….