So why didn’t he leave? That season, terrible engine reliability had cost him a shot at the world title and Ferrari’s flat-12 was known to be near-bulletproof. And the Old Man offered me twice the money I was getting from Colin.” “After Monza I said to Colin, ‘I’m going to see Ferrari.’ ‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘because all you will do is confuse yourself and make it hard for yourself.’ But I had to satisfy myself, so I went. At that point Colin and I had a commitment to each other, but it could have been broken. So now the number one seat was up for grabs. By the time Monza came around, Niki had said he was quitting Ferrari and going with Ecclestone. “At around mid-season, I signed a letter of intent… to stay with Colin for 1978. “That was a really delicate thing,” says Andretti. The book, simply titled Mario Andretti: World Champion, caught him in candid mood – although when is he anything else? Still, the revelation that he almost left Lotus in 1977 to join Ferrari for ’78 reminds us how close he came to missing out on Colin Chapman’s ground effects Type 79 masterpiece, and potentially the title that would define his F1 career.
Andretti almost left Lotus for Ferrari in 1978
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