In 1975, Mario Andretti was already a star. He was a four-time champion in American open-wheel racing, had won the Indy 500 and had already achieved a Grand Prix victory with the legendary Scuderia Ferrari.
Yet it wasn’t until 1975 that he finally decided to drive full-time in Formula 1. His decision to do so was largely thanks to a man named Parnelli Jones.
Andretti: Parnelli offered “the chance of the moment”
Despite all his success in American open-wheel racing, Mario Andretti was still hesitant to devote himself fully to Formula 1 in the early to mid-1970s – and he had a good reason for this.
“The bottom line is that I had to consider the financial aspect,” Andretti said in an episode of the motorsport history podcast “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys.”
“Back then, Formula 1 was nothing like what we could do in America.”
In the 1970s, prize money in Formula One was largely determined by the circuit at which it was held, and the prize funds were not huge. In fact, one of the reasons Watkins Glen became such a popular home of Formula One was simply that the circuit generally offered the highest prize funds of the year.
Watkins Glen adopted a mindset that was paramount in American racing.
Outside of his racing career, Mario Andretti also started a family – and Andretti wanted to make sure his wife and young children could live a comfortable life without him.
“I had to think about my family,” he said of his finances. “Even in the years I was racing sprint cars, I lost my closest friends.”
“My wife never made me feel guilty if I did something that would leave her with small children. It was just a difficult situation because we had seen what had happened to some of our friends.”
To illustrate how serious the situation could be, Andretti had turned down offers for Formula 1 jobs with Lotus and Ferrari. Although joining those teams as a young man would probably have given him the best conditions for an impressive racing career, he did not want to take the risk of doing something that could eventually harm his family.
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But Andretti had an advantage: Parnelli Jones.
Jones was a former race car driver who later founded his own racing team, Vel’s Parnelli Jones Racing. The team won the Indy 500 in 1970 and 1971 and also won the USAC National Championships in 1970, 1971 and 1972.
In 1974, Mario Andretti joined Vel’s Parnelli Jones Racing, and it was Andretti who suggested, “We need to go to Formula 1.”
The team took part in two F1 races at the end of 1974 to test their skills before joining the series full-time in 1975 with their own chassis called the VPJ4.
Unfortunately, it was not a successful operation. At the end of 1974, Firestone ended its partnership with the team, leaving Vel’s Parnelli Jones Racing to operate on a tight budget. The team’s best result was fourth place at the 1975 Swedish Grand Prix, and without a title sponsor, it retired from F1 after just three races in 1976.
“I was devastated,” Andretti recalled of the team’s decision to end its F1 program. “They never consulted me. It wasn’t done very well.”
However, the friendship between Andretti and Jones was eventually repaired. Andretti joined Colin Chapman’s Lotus team in 1976, helping to revive a team that was in trouble. Meanwhile, Jones helped Cosworth develop a turbo version of the team’s DFV V8 Formula One engine. This project eventually became the Cosworth DFX, an engine that won every Indy 500 between 1978 and 1987.
Today we pay our respects to Parnelli Jones, who was born on this day in 1933. Without him, we might never have crowned Mario Andretti world champion.
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