THELAST (NOT SO GREAT) AMERICAN HERO

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Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve and Max Verstappen are all examples of drivers who became world champions despite career-boosting surnames as offspring of F1 pilots.

Conspicuous by their absence from this fraternity of famously fast families is perhaps one of the most famous motor racing names of all: Andretti. A multi-discipline American institution that has won everything it has participated in and deserving of its own dollar bill, its patriarch Mario was crowned F1 world champion in 1978.

However, his determination to see another Andretti in F1 did nothing but curse his son, Michael. Fifteen years later, he tried to follow in his father’s footsteps with a foray into the sport best forgotten. Whether circumstance, unfortunate timing, piranha-club politics or a hyper-toxic conflation of all three, it was not helped by Michael’s subsequent near-conspiracy theory perception of F1’s inner workings, particularly after repeated desperate attempts to get his eponymous team on to the grid for 2024.

Is the healing power of time overrated? For Michael Andretti, it assuredly was.