Calling RACER No. 337 “The Greatest Issue” might seem like a tough brief to deliver on. But inside, our new issue lives up to the billing, telling stories of greatness from motorsports past and present.
Fo us, one aspect of greatness is versatility – not just taking part in multiple types of racing, but excelling in them. When discussing the most versatile drivers in motorsports history, there are several candidates for second- and third-best, but the greatest is surely indisputable. Despite his career not starting until he was 19-years old, or perhaps because of this, Mario Andretti accelerated his learning curve by driving anything and everything, his ultimate aim being Formula 1. When he got there, he was ready – and famously took pole for his first grand prix, in 1968 – before continuing to drive anything and everything!
Not only did Andretti drive a wide variety of cars, he also won with them, and was often the difference-maker. Ferrari would not have won the 1970 edition of the Twelve Hours of Sebring without Mario’s speed, verve and determination, and several years and experiences later, he combined those same qualities with a hard-earned technical savvy to relight the fire under a distracted Colin Chapman in Formula 1. The Lotus 77 of 1976 started off as a wayward hound of a car, but largely thanks to Andretti’s feedback, it became domesticated and at the season finale in Japan, he took pole and victory. The following year in the Lotus 78, he became a Formula 1 World Championship contender, and with the Lotus 78 and 79, he sealed the deal in 1978. It’s hard to imagine any of Andretti’s contemporaries providing the same combination of driving talent and engineering know-how to inspire a team’s renaissance.
Of course, Mario being Mario, during his spell at Lotus, he was filling up the weekends between grands prix to race part-time for Penske in Indy cars and competing in the IROC championship (winning the title in 1979). As you can appreciate, it wasn’t the work of a moment to narrow down which of Andretti’s cars we wanted our resident artist, Paul Laguette, to portray on the front cover of this issue, but we feel we’ve covered some memorable bases…
Of course, motorsports is more specialized now by necessity – heck, Formula 1 has 24 rounds per year and runs from early March to early December. Which is why this latest RACER, containing our celebrations of the best drivers and teams of 2025, couldn’t go to press until we knew who was the F1 champion. To this end, as well as paying tribute to Lando Norris, we’ve also commemorated McLaren’s previous 12 F1 world drivers’ championship triumphs.
And bringing versatility into the present, we’ve highlighted a few modern-day drivers who have embraced several motorsport disciplines. One such is Kyle Larson, but in this issue of RACER, our interview with him focuses on his remarkable clinching of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series championship. It’s quite appropriate that he features in an issue celebrating greatness: with this second title in five years, we have no doubt that Larson is on his way to joining the NASCAR pantheon.
Continuing the theme of greatness, we’ve also tried to narrow down which are the all-time best Indy cars, but it’s a task made tricky by the evolution of the championship and its calendar. The Chaparral 2K was a sensational ground-effect car that absolutely belongs on the list of contenders, but even its designer John Barnard would admit it might have struggled at Langhorne or Pikes Peak. Our effort to decide on the greatest Indy cars depends very much on context.
Discussions about the greatest ever road course are less contentious: the Nürburgring-Nordschleife was a daunting challenge from the day it opened in 1927, and remains so today, because in truth, its evolution hasn’t kept pace with that of the race car, nor could it possibly meet the most demanding safety standards of top-rank series. But that reputation for danger is undoubtedly part of its allure… for onlookers, at least. Jackie Stewart once recounted, “The number of times I thanked God when I finished a lap there… I can’t remember doing one more balls-out lap at the ’Ring than I needed to. It gave you amazing satisfaction, no doubt about it, but anyone who says he loved it is either a liar or he wasn’t going fast enough.”
When a legend who won three grands prix there – one of them by four minutes – describes the challenge of the Nürburgring in such an awe-filled manner, there’s little doubt that it’s the greatest track.
There’s a lot more to enjoy in this RACER, too, including a celebration of another IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTD PRO title for Corvette Racing, a double helping of off-road racing, courtesy of Baja 1000 debutant Vaughn Gittin Jr. and Ford’s all-American Dakar racer Mitch Guthrie, an interview with World Superbike legend Jonathan Rea, road impressions of BMW’s M4 CS, and much more.
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