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Tuesday, March 27
Andretti finished second in 1991
Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS -- Michael Andretti has unfinished business at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Absent since the formation of the Indy Racing League five years ago, Andretti will return in May with the new Motorola-Archipelago Racing team formed by CART team owner Barry Green. Andretti's return was first reported March 10 by ESPN's Robin Miller.
|  | | Michael Andretti answers questions during his Tuesday news conference at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. |
"Had I won this race, maybe I wouldn't be going through the effort I am now to try to do what we're doing, because it's going to be a lot of hard work," Andretti said Tuesday. "I'm not kidding myself.
"I'm doing it because I've never won at this place, and my age is saying, 'You're running out of chances.'"
The son of 1969 Indy winner Mario Andretti is 38.
Andretti has won a record 40 CART races. Like his father 19 years before, Andretti was Indy's Rookie of the Year in 1984 -- when he shared the award with Roberto Guerrero. Three times, Andretti has dropped out while leading the race. In 1992, he was in front with just 10 laps remaining.
"I don't like to call it a jinx," he said of his failure to win at Indy in 11 tries. "I use `luck' because that's the easiest thing to say. It's just the way things have happened.
"But taking five years off has erased that, cleaned that whole thing off so now we're starting fresh."
Green also owns the Team Green cars driven in CART by Paul Tracy and Dario Franchitti, who are not racing at Indy. The joint effort at Indianapolis will put Andretti behind the wheel of a Dallara-Oldsmobile, with the work being done at the IRL Panther Racing team's Indianapolis shop.
Andretti was fourth in the CART season-opener in Mexico, and confirmed two weeks ago that Green was trying to put the deal together.
"When we signed the contract, Barry knew one of the things I wanted was to drive at Indianapolis, and he put together a great effort -- a winning effort, I think," Andretti said.
Andretti tested an IRL car last weekend in Homestead, Fla.
"The cars are quite different. The weight and horsepower are different. It took a bit to get used to that," he said. "But we made the car feel pretty good. And it felt really comfortable."
Andretti said his feeling about the IRL has changed since the league was founded five years ago.
"I talked to a lot of people and started to understand what the IRL is about, and I like the direction they're going," he said. "There's always going to be two series. We have to accept that.
"I definitely said some things that were probably wrong at the beginning, but that was more from emotion because I wasn't going to be at the Indianapolis 500."
The CART boycott began to crumble last year, when Ganassi Racing returned to Indy and won with driver Juan Montoya. Ganassi and Penske Racing, whose drivers have won a record 10 Indy 500s, already have said they will enter the race this year.
"It was really tough, especially the last few years because I started to feel like I was never going to get back here," Andretti said. "Last year was tough and when I saw Juan win I thought I could at least have kept him honest. I thought, `This is not fair. I need to be there, too."'
Al Unser Jr., a two-time Indy winner and former driver for Penske, joined the IRL last year with Galles Racing.
Ganassi last week entered four cars for rookies Bruno Junqueira and Nicolas Minassian, who last season finished 1-2 in the Formula 3000 series. Montoya left Ganassi to drive this season in Formula One.
Andretti, whose best finish at Indianapolis was second to Rick Mears in 1991, has led more laps than any driver who has never won the world's richest auto race.
"A lot of fans are excited and intrigued by this," speedway president Tony George said of Andretti's return. "We were happy when Ganassi came back last year, and hopefully this signals that things are starting to stabilize and we can coexist (with CART)." Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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