Marco Andretti has claimed that
McLaren ‘sabotaged' his father's efforts during his one and only season in
Formula 1 in 1993, insisting the Woking-based outfit went out of their way to ‘make him look bad'.
Andretti Snr scored just three times in 13 races in the top flight 15 years ago, before being replaced in the car by test driver Mika Hakkinen towards the end of the campaign, with the Finn subsequently going on to clinch 20 grand prix victories, 51 rostrum finishes and two world championship crowns for the squad. The American, though, enjoyed no such good fortune, packing his bags prior to the Portuguese Grand Prix and returning across the Pond, proverbial tail between his legs. That, however, his son insists, is not ‘the real story'.
“If you ask me, it was sabotage,” Andretti Jnr – the third generation of one of international motor racing's most illustrious families – told
The Associated Press as he prepares for his third participation in the celebrated Indianapolis 500 this weekend. “They wanted him to fail.
“It was a very bad deal. The reality of it was, they had Mika Hakkinen ready to come in for a lot less than what my dad was getting paid, and that's all it was. Right then and there, they had to make him look [bad].”
The word at the time was that Andretti's
F1 venture had been a spectacular failure, with the Pennsylvania native ending every one of his first four races in the gravel trap – on two occasions failing to make it beyond even the opening lap, with further such ‘rookie' errors at
Silverstone and Hockenheim – and failing to out-qualify triple world champion team-mate
Ayrton Senna season-long, even if he did make the top ten on the starting grid seven times.
The paddock whispers suggested he had been either unable or unwilling to commit himself fully or adapt to the European way of life after the best part of a decade spent living and racing in America, but Andretti Jnr went further than to merely suggest that McLaren gave Senna preferential treatment and equipment within the team.
