While the Others Raced, Andretti Just Coasted : Fuel Supply Gamble Pays Off With a Big Victory in Long Beach Grand Prix

When you’ve passed Barstow on your way to Las Vegas and your fuel gauge is flirting with empty, don’t try making Baker unless Mario Andretti is driving.

The remarkable Mario could probably coast into the Strip on fumes and roll a seven before the engine died.

Sunday at Long Beach he had just enough methanol to finish the full 90 laps and claim his second consecutive Toyota Grand Prix victory--third overall--while his gas-guzzling rival, Danny Sullivan, expired on the outskirts of Victory Lane.

“We planned it all along,” said Darrell Soppe, Andretti’s crew chief. “We’ve got a cushion. We got a light in the car. If it’s low, you just come in.”

Andretti’s Lola T-900 has a little white light on the upper right of the instrument panel that comes on when the fuel gets low.

“Here we probably get a lap-and-a-half (warning), two laps,” Soppe said.

And did the light ever come on?

“Oh, yeah,” Soppe said, leaning into the cockpit. “It’s still on.”

Casual? Not really. Andretti’s pit looked like a maternity waiting room during the last two or three laps of the race. Actor Paul Newman, co-owner of the car with Carl Haas, was still shaking after it was over.

“I’ve gotta stop this,” Newman said, reaching into an ice chest for a beer. “I was vibrating. I was a human vibrator. I went up there (in the pit-row suites) to watch the start of the race, and after Sullivan took the lead I came down here to find out what was going on.”

The problem was compounded when Andretti’s radio went out after the start and his crew couldn’t talk to him, although he could talk to them.

With about a dozen laps to go, they flashed him a note on the pit board: “One stop possible?”

In other words, they left it up to him to go for it.

Andretti said that without the radio, “they couldn’t argue. There was no point in stopping if I was going to try to win the race.”

Because the race was shortened from 187.04 miles to 150 this year, Soppe figured Andretti could make it on only one pit stop, while most of the other cars would need two. But the plan developed a hitch when Andretti’s warning light flickered and he had to refuel at 44 laps, one short of the halfway mark and two ahead of schedule.

“At that point I turned the boost down,” Andretti said.

Translation: he adjusted a knob to reduce horsepower and save fuel. That’s when Sullivan was able to catch up and pass him.

Andretti: “When he went by me I just decided not to fight it because there’s no way I would have finished the race that way with just one stop. So I just took my lumps.”

Shift the scene to the other end--the far end--of Pit Row along Shoreline Drive, where the Roger Penske team had set up shop. Sullivan had to coast the whole distance with a dead engine when he went dry before his second stop.

Crew chief Derrick Walker said: “We made some changes last night which made him go fast, the car drive better for him, and I think that altered the fuel mileage.”

Walker said he thought the changes “were quite safe because he was getting quite reasonable mileage yesterday (Saturday).”

Sullivan’s March 85C also has a warning light--an orange one on the upper left side of his panel. By the end of the day it became a spotlight, and as he finally coasted to a silent stop 200 yards from the finish line, it glared at him, gloating.

Walker said: “The warning light came on a little too early, so we knew we had a problem. We were trying to get a big enough margin between Andretti and Danny (before refueling without losing the lead), but as it was, we were pretty marginal.”

Sullivan also cut his boost trying to save fuel.

“He ran at least 50 per cent of the race with low boost,” Walker said, “so he was well within his capabilities. He could have won the race without any problem if, in hindsight, we hadn’t made the changes last night.”

Soppe estimated that Andretti’s car got about two miles per gallon.

Sullivan’s car got only 1.52 before he turned down the boost and 1.75 after. Walker was asked if he was curious about how Soppe did it.

“Very curious,” Walker said. “If he’s going the full distance like he did, well, he’s obviously got it right down to the wire. I’m sure he had very little left.

“On our mileage log yesterday, we could have done exactly what he did. We were trying to be very conservative. Danny was being very sensible and smooth and trying to get it home, really. He wasn’t really racing.”