Granatelli struck green at Brickyard
Andy Granatelli was only briefly a race car driver, but he remained a household name throughout motor sports for the rest of his life, even after retiring from the spotlight nearly 30 years ago.
Granatelli, the flamboyant figure known best for lavish promotion, commercials and sponsorships deals involving STP fuel and oil additives, died Sunday at hospital in Santa Barbara, Calif.
He was 90.
He drove at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway once. He crashed in qualifying there in 1948, breaking both shoulders and knocking out 11 teeth. But as a STP spokesman and car owner/designer, he was one of the most recognizable figures at the Speedway for decades and became known as Mr. 500.
“He understood better than anyone the spirit and challenge of the Indianapolis 500 and had a remarkable ability to combine innovative technologies with talented race-car drivers to make his cars a threat to win at Indianapolis every year,” Speedway President J. Douglas Boles said in a statement Sunday.
His cars were cutting edge and fast at Indy throughout the 1960s. Drawing as much attention, however, were his crew members in their white pants and shirts covered with dozens of STP patches.
“Andy leaves a legacy of historic moments that will live forever in Indianapolis 500 lore,” Boles said,“including his famous turbine that dominated the 1967 Indianapolis 500, the Lotus 56 of 1968 and giving the great Mario Andretti a kiss on the cheek in Victory Lane after his 1969 win.”
“He touched my life and my family’s life in so many ways,” Andretti told the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call. “We were able to win Indianapolis together. That one he really wanted and deserved and I was happy to be the one to bring him it.”
In 1972, he moved to NASCAR and struck a landmark $250,000 sponsorship deal with Richard Petty that changed the landscape of team sponsorship on the sport.
“Before Andy Granatelli and STP arrived on the scene, cars were sponsored by Joe’s Garage and Abby’s Fish Shack and lot of just local people,” Dean Kruse, a friend of Granatelli’s, told nascar.
com. “Sometimes when they’d go to a race track 100 miles away, they’d go visit people and put their restaurants and gas stations on the cars. But there was no major money. … [The STP deal] inspired other drivers, and [Bill] France, to approach bigger companies. Andy was the one who thought of that.”
However, the deal almost didn’t happen. All of Granatelli’s cars at Indy were painted day-glow orange and wanted Petty’s No. 43 Dodge Charger to be the same.
Nope, Petty said. His family’s cars were always pale blue - Petty blue in NASCAR parlance.
The compromising paint scheme involved both colors and was equally famous, if not more so, than what Granatelli and Petty each originally wanted.
“Andy was one of the best at public relations and marketing in all of motor sports. He was ahead of his time and set the standard for selling his products,” Petty said Monday.
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Sports, Pages 20 on 01/01/2014