There’s a link below to a NASCAR item on Andy Granatelli, legend of the Indy 500, STP Oil Treatment, Studebaker, Paxton Products, Grancor and more. The man is a fantastic character and it’s great to hear that he is still with us and as irrepressible as ever.
Stories about him are legion (and he maybe wrote most of them), but as a salesman, promoter, innovator and all round showman the world of motor sport would have been a lot less fun without him.
The feeling of excitement when I first saw the pictures of his 1967 STP Paxton Turbocar is with me still. It was an awesome device, and, like the innovations from Midland, Texas in Can-Am, you somehow knew that a ban would come. It did, but not before further efforts to castrate the beast had yielded the 1968 Lotus 56 STP Turbocars that also almost pulled off the win. A great shame that both of these cars never made winner’s circle, and somewhat ironic that the 1969 STP Lotus entries were pulled so that Mario Andretti had to start in his back up car, and won!
The Italian connection of Andretti and Granatelli had some rotten luck at Indy, and their one win between them is that 1969 race in the second string car. Never mind, they tried. Boy did they try. Happy memories.
Filed under: Cars, Circuits, Drivers, F1, Indycar, NASCAR, Teams | Tagged: autoracing, F1, formula one, Indy500, Indycar, lotus, motorsport, NASCAR, racecar |
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