<VV> Phil Hill - No Corvair

[Alan and Clare Wesson]

> Well, American-BORN.  Mario Andretti was of course a naturalized
> citizen long before he won in F1.  And should anyone care to question
> Mario's American-ness, the fact that he came up through the dirt oval
> ranks makes him thoroughly American to me.

I checked him out on wiki recently, and it turns out he isn't even actually 
Italian born either! He's from what was for most of his life Yugoslavia and 
is now Slovenia, because Mussolini had invaded the bit of Yugoslavia round 
the corner from Trieste and was trying to 'Italianise' it before the war, 
when Mario was born. The area's called Istria, and it is just round the 
corner from Venice (I used to work right near it).

Turns out Mario's real name is actually Andretic, but they Italianised it to 
Andretti because that was Italian government policy under Mussolini.

So my favourite story about him should actually be slightly different. The 
story is that apparently a journo asked him one day if he objected to the 
nickname 'Superwop'.

Mario's answer was 'Hell, no - as long as they don't call me Smelly Wop of 
Dirty Wop I'm happy. Who's gonna object to being called Super anything?'

But in fact his nickname should actually have been SuperYugo!

Cheers

Alan

P.S. And if any of you haven't seen the incident that gave Phil Hill the 
championship (it was the death of Wolfgang von Trips at Monza in 1961 - von 
Trips was leading the championship until he was killed) go on Youtube and 
search for 'von Trips Monza 1961. I have never seen an accident like it.