John Andretti’s Versatility Shines In ‘RACER,’ With Jade Gurss

When motorsports fans think of versatile drivers, they can’t help but mention Parnelli Jones, A.J. Foyt, Dan Gurney, Mario Andretti, Al Unser Sr., Danny Ongais, Tony Stewart, Bobby Allison, and Nigel Mansell. More modern names would include Jeff Gordon, Dario Franchitti, and perhaps Kimi Räikkönen, and drag racing fans surely would add Jeg Coughlin Jr. to that list. Or if someone is a real student of the industry, they might recall Jim Hurtubise, Jim McElreath, or Jimmy Bryan.

One name that certainly belongs in the conversation is John Andretti.

With the interviewing, organizing, and refining skills of veteran writer Jade Gurss, Andretti – a deliciously clever storyteller himself – compiled an insightful and entertaining collection of memories before he lost his battle with colon cancer this past January, just 42 days before his 57th birthday.

“RACER” (Octane Press) weaves a tapestry of love for family and motorsports, through just about every form of racing in America. And according to Gurss, the words are mainly Andretti’s.

“He really seemed to enjoy sitting down and telling his stories. There were days we would meet where he clearly was not well or not feeling well, but he’d start on an anecdote or a story and the color would come back in his face or his energy would go up. I was really happy about it, because it was clear it he enjoyed the project and understood the weight of what we were doing, that this was his chance to tell his story to be passed along to all of his grandchildren. So it was kind of that feeling from the start, the weight of it, the importance of it, that I had to do all I could to tell his story as best as I could, based on our interviews,” Gurss said.

The Charlotte-based Gurss also has worked with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Darrell Waltrip, penned a series of motorsports books, and worked in marketing and publicity for Ilmor Engineering, Mercedes-Benz, and Mazda. So his credentials are impressive, but he said it was “very important to me that you heard John’s voice, that it was true to his speech patterns. It’s really in his voice.

“It was easy because of who John is and John’s ability to tell great stories. That made it pretty simple for me,” Gurss said. “I was doing my job if I was invisible. Because John was such a great storyteller, I didn’t have to spice up or embellish anything. It was all in his storytelling tone. That made it very easy for me to disappear in[to] his words. I had to organize the book and set the chapters and the flow and all of that. But honestly, I thought my role was to disappear in the writing so that it was all John. When people say they hear John’s voice, well, then that’s very meaningful to me.”

He was able to capture some hilarious lines from Andretti, who shared his story with Gurss between multiple surgeries and chemotherapy treatments.

One will strike a chord with drag-racing fans. Andretti expressed a genuine fondness for Funny Car superstar John Force before saying, “If you know anything about Force, you know he learned how to whisper in a sawmill!”

Gurss insisted that was not his line but rather Andretti’s.

“That’s purely his,” Gurss said. “John had such a dry wit that sometimes you almost couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.”

Drag-racing fans have no doubt he was telling the truth in this case, and Gurss said, “That was one of his good lines. That was one thing I enjoyed about him, that there was this sly sense of humor through all of his stories. You really had to be really kind of paying attention, I guess, for lack of a better term, to make sure that came through in the book, the twinkle in his eye kind of thing. Sometimes the littlest comments were the funniest.

Although John Andretti took a final lap around his beloved Indianapolis Motor Speedway on a cold, drizzly Feb. 6, before his burial, he springs to life That’s what shone throughout the 235 pages of “RACER,” Andretti’s sense of humor and sense of self. He was completely candid about the highlights and low points of his adventurous life, including his journey through the maze of treatments, emotions, and ultimately the final confrontation with cancer.

What was especially priceless about “RACER” is the tributes throughout to Aldo Andretti, John’s father and twin brother of Mario. Readers see Aldo Andretti’s fierce passion and devotion for family, his positive outlook on life, and even his sometimes-goofy sense of humor. “I wish I could be more like him,” John Andretti said toward the beginning of the book. By the end of the book, it’s clear he was strikingly just like him, downplaying his own concerns and needs. He ends the book by reassuring, “I’m doing good,” in typical Aldo style.

In some ways, he was an Andretti through and through, but he also exhibited a fair bit of personality from mom Corky. As a member of a heralded racing family, Andretti had plenty of amazing and amusing stories about his cousins Michael and Jeff, as well as of his brothers Mark and Adam and sisters Carolyn and Mary Jo. And, of course, readers will find some sweet stories about his devoted wife Nancy, tracing their lives together along with children Jarett, Olivia, and Amelia.

Oh, did John Andretti have as many lively stories to spin as Force does. In 1993 alone, Andretti drove seven different kinds of race cars. So it’s only natural that he would have lots of material from which to extract his anecdotes. They touched on his experiences in every form of racing, from sports cars to the world of midgets and sprints to champ cars (IndyCar) to NASCAR. They were about the heroes of the sport, including A.J. Foyt (his godfather) and Richard Petty. They told the real ordeal of being the first to compete in the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte the same day – complete with how badly he wanted to use the restroom but wasn’t able to until the crankshaft broke on his Billy Hagan-owned Cup car just beyond the halfway point.

Gurss’ job of capsulizing all of Andretti’s stories was not simple.

“I reached out to him in late 2018. I wish I would have thought of it earlier. But it just hit me one day that, my gosh, John’s got a story to tell. He was a great storyteller. So I reached out to him, and he was interested but just ready to go through a really major surgery. So we just kept touching base every month or two. Finally, he was in shape enough where he could meet with me. So finally June 1st of 2019 is literally the day that we first sat down and began taping interviews,” Gurss said.

“And at that time, I was very conscious of the need to be efficient. I honestly didn’t know how well or how sick he was until right before Thanksgiving, He invited me over and we sat down and he pretty much said that he’d only been given until the first of the year. So that was pretty shocking,” he said. “He was able to read probably 85 percent of the finished manuscript before he was too ill to really read the rest. I felt badly that he didn’t get all the way through it, but I felt good that he had seen enough where he just occasionally would have a little change here or there.”

But John Andretti didn’t complain. He had learned that from his parents first, but some special friends reinforced that for him.

Just a few miles from his beloved racetrack – a world away from racing but a world that has seen its own brand of drama, trauma, and triumph – sits Riley Hospital for Children. The patients there and their families long have been family to him, too. Riley has been in the hearts of John Andretti and his entire family, since Aldo and Corky Andretti were raising their family.

John Andretti helped raise millions of dollars for the hospital and its foundation in his nearly 25 years of commitment.

But to hear him tell it in RACER, he was the actual beneficiary in the longstanding relationship: “You don’t have to be a saint. Nobody is expecting that of anybody. And I’m surely not one, by far. But you know the difference between right and wrong and the value of doing something good for somebody else. I learn a lot from these kids. . . . If you ever want to put your feet back on the ground, go see those kids and their families. You’ll see the battles they’re fighting, and it changes your perspective on your own life. That’s why I don’t say, ‘Why me?’ [with his colon cancer]. . . . I’ve been gifted and blessed. Whatever happens, happens. The biggest blessing of all is to be around people you love and people who have compassion for others. Because you get so much more back than you can ever give.”

He still is giving to Riley. Ten percent of the proceeds from sales of RACER – as well as 100 percent of the Andretti family’s earnings from the book project – are donated to the Race For Riley initiative and the Riley Children’s Foundation.

Gurss said of Andretti, “He really had his priorities straight. In my career I’ve worked for so many drivers, but I’ve always loved the ones who had their priorities together or they weren’t all racing all the time. John just really had such strong sense of family and all of that. That really is the thread that carries through the whole book. It’s called “Racer,” and it certainly is about racing, but it’s family, really.”

How proud he would have been to witness his godson, cousin Marco Andretti (Michael’s son, Mario’s grandson), earn the pole position for the 2020 Indianapolis 500. And Marco paid tribute to him before the family moment that saw Mario, Michael, and Marco on the track at the same time before the green flag waved.

“We knew what this place meant to him and our family,” Marco Andretti said, recalling that Nancy Andretti told him her husband “has been riding with you 100 percent.” Marco said, “And we feel that.

“He’s a very close second to my grandfather, Mario, as far as passion for the sport. Guys like him . . . who have been there and know what I can do . . . that’s what feels so neat to me.”

As a post-script, Marco Andretti said being an Andretti “is the biggest blessing in the world.” And a lot of that is because of his godfather, whose own godfather was A.J. Foyt.

Foyt said in one of the forewords to “RACER” that John Andretti – who drove for him in 1993 and 1994 – “was always a very good boy, and he was a helluva lot better race-car driver than a lot of people realize.”

Anybody who reads “RACER” will realize that, if he or she didn’t know it before.
Gurss is immersed in another task that takes a peek at one segment of another famous racing family, the Unsers.

“Soon after I finished John’s book, I started working with Al Unser Jr. on his life’s story. It’s going to be amazing. He went through a lot of turmoil and a lot of things in his personal life that he has never really talked about or shared. He has decided that he really wants to tell his full story, and it has been great working with him,” Gurss.

“In the same way that I wrote the John Andretti book, I’m trying to do the same with Al Jr., to have a book that’s in his voice that tells his intense story,” he said. “The Indy 500 is why he wanted to become a race-car driver. It fueled all of it for him. For him to win Indy was just Earth-shattering for him. It’s what he built everything towards from the time he was nine years old. He was nine when he started with karting. I’m excited about how the interviews have gone and being able to tell his story, the good and the bad.”

The project is in the early stages now, but the book is expected to be finished sometime in 2021.