Mario Andretti was never meant to win the Daytona 500 in 1967. Not when sabotage came into play. And definitely not when those saboteurs were the men in charge of running his car.

Fifty years after the living legend barnstormed NASCAR's biggest race, ruffled plenty of feathers on the way to Victory Lane, and walked off with its greatest prize, Andretti isn't sore about the shoddy treatment by the Ford factory Holman Moody team. If anything, the experience hardened Mario at a crucial period in the sport.

The young Italian, just 26 at the time of his win, had become an American citizen, embraced everything about his new country--including its love affair with oval racing--and arrived at Daytona riding a wave of momentum as one of Indy car's burgeoning stars.

His first visit in 1966 with racing's mad scientist, the late Smokey Yunick, gave Andretti a chance to learn the unique handling and driving characteristics required to herd a production-based stock car around Daytona's 2.5-mile banked oval.

As a member of Ford's factory Le Mans program (also led by Holman Moody) the opportunity to give Daytona another try was presented the following year, but the team's underhanded intentions weren't revealed until Andretti took to the track in the blue No. 11 Ford Fairlane.

Mario might have been a tiny foreigner among towering homegrown stars like Tiny Lund and David Pearson, but with two USAC Indycar titles an Indy 500 pole position to his credit, the diminutive open-wheeler was more than ready to scrap with the Allisons, Pettys and Yarbroughs.

His Holman Moody teammate Fred Lorenzen, however, was a different story.

The Illinois product was among NASCAR's best in the 1960s. As the tip of the Ford's stock car spear, Lorenzen and Holman Moody became an instant threat to win Daytona when they joined forces in 1962. A pair of top fives from 1962-1963 foreshadowed what was on the horizon, and with a breakthrough Daytona 500 win in 1965, the potential of Lorenzen and the Blue Oval was fully realized.

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Another top five for Lorenzen in 1966—as Andretti finished 37th with a blown engine on his debut with Yunick—hints at the reason behind Mario's frosty reception in 1967. The Holman Moody veteran, a perennial front-runner for Ford at NASCAR's most important race, was clearly unimpressed at being partnered with an otherworldly and relatively inexperienced teammate.

"I just turned out to be the experimental boy there...being able to be alongside Fred Lorenzen, even though he wasn't volunteering any help at all…" Andretti said. " Which was fine. I was just the new boy on the block there."

The first sign of trouble appeared in practice. Although some elements within the Holman Moody team were supportive of Andretti, including co-owner John Holman, the second-class treatment from other factions within the program ensured Lorenzen received the most powerful motors.

"We got the car working pretty darn good, but we did not have the engines that some of the other guys had," Andretti continued. "That was a bit of a struggle for me … to finally get what I deserved, I think.

"I had to qualify … with the motor that was down 400 revs, and that was based on the gear I was running. The only guy that gave me the right tip was Donnie Allison, believe it or not. I befriended the Allison brothers quickly. Nobody was really too open about things.

"I said, 'what sort of revs should I be pulling with 370 gear?' [Allison said] '7200, for sure,' and I was pulling like 6800."

Saddled with an underwhelming engine, Andretti sacrificed handling stability to regain some of the missing top speed.

"When I qualified, I qualified with a really low spoiler to try to get some speed out of it," he said. But lo and behold, I had to race with it. And that is what really, that was a little bit of an issue."

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With NASCAR's rules requiring teams to race their cars in the specification as they qualified, Andretti's low-downforce workaround helped secure 12th on the starting grid but it meant he'd be strapped inside a rolling earthquake for 200 laps come race day. Lorenzen, with the big motor and tall rear spoiler, qualified a comfortable fourth.

Sick of the shoddy treatment, Andretti applied heat and pressure back at Ford's headquarters after qualifying. Mario's mercurial talent alone allowed him to drag the No. 11 Fairlane up to 12th in time trials, and with a decent race result within reach, he wasn't shy while lobbying Dearborn's brass to drop a proper motor into his engine bay.

An "experimental boy" no more, Andretti's wish was granted, but it only compounded the difficulty that was brewing. If his car was a handful with a soft engine and minimal rear downforce, living with a raging new motor for 500 miles meant Mario would be locked into a race-long fight with the steering wheel.

"Honestly, even though the car was loose, it was very, very neutral, it was very neutral but in traffic it was loose," he conceded. "It was manageable. The mechanical side of the car was very balanced."

It was manageable… for Mario Andretti.

If someone asks where the sport of drifting got its start, that blue Ford Fairlane at the 1967 Daytona 500 might just be the correct answer. All while lapping in the 180mph range.

"Nobody can drive a car that is radically loose and ready to spin," Andretti acknowledged. "This was ready to spin, but I had the feel of the back end, I could almost hang out the back. Sometimes when I got caught out, I used to I think at the beginning [that] I had an oil leak because I was smoking the back tire."

The dirt oval-trained phenom, with a hot motor under the hood and a wandering rear end, put on a show that shocked stock car's establishment.

"I don't think I turned left in the entire 200 laps," Andretti said with a quick laugh. "I would go into neutral [handling] and countersteer, but I felt the back end, it was still, I had a feel for it. But I had to lead, I had to lead. [If] you are following—it was really, really tough. So I had to lead and I had to run high on the track as much as possible because I didn't want to have anyone go by me on the right side."

The other drivers didn't stand a chance against Andretti. Supreme car control and serious straightline speed meant the little man from Nazareth, Pennsylvania ran off and hid from the dozens of Chevys, Dodges, Plymouths and Ford that shrank in his rearview mirror.

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With the win drawing near in the final stages of the race, a new obstacle appeared on pit lane. Flying around Daytona's high banks at a fearsome pace was something Andretti could control. Left to do his job, Mario dominated, leading 112 of the 200 laps. In a fair fight with Lorenzen--his unwilling teammate, the result was a lopsided mess. At least until the Holman Moody team intervened during the final pit stop.

"We came in, I was leading, and Freddie was behind me," Andretti recalled. "They kept me [up] on the jacks and let Freddie go. And he was just about at Turn 1 already before they let me go … I was so pissed, as you can imagine. But it is what it is."

The attempted robbery—to steal a surefire win from Andretti and hand it to his favored teammate—only managed to enrage the all-time great.

"But then I caught him and actually I went by," Mario continued. "There was Tiny Lund, we were actually lapping him, going into the back straightaway, Freddie was right behind me then and I could not shake him. And I had passed him by then.

"All of a sudden, Tiny motioned me to go by on the outside. He went to the center of the track on the back straightaway and I went right up to him and I dove to the inside to startle things. And Freddie I think backed off because he didn't expect that. And I looked back and Freddie was pretty small, he never caught me."

The Dixie comeuppance, from Italy by way of Pennsylvania, was a joy to deliver.

"I just pulled away from him," Andretti said. "And when the yellow came out with I think two, or three laps to go, [it was] like 22 seconds I had on him. I was clear. I was clear of him. The last part, after my last stop, I drove every lap like I was qualifying because I was so upset at that point. But once I got it clear on my own, I just drove ten tenths. And it seemed like it worked for me."

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Andretti's first major triumph, captured in the heart of the deep south, wasn't as popular as one might expect.

"I'm sure not everyone was happy with it, including Ford; they wanted Lorenzen to win, not me, because it was a one-off race for me," Mario said.

Decades later, NASCAR will blanket Andretti with a full complement of respect as it celebrates the 50th anniversary of his stunning win. As an honorary official for Sunday's running of the Daytona 500, Mario can look forward to taking in any of the adoration that was missing in 1967.

"I am graced with this opportunity, of course," he said with a tinge of pride. "It is so nice of Daytona and NASCAR to invite me there to remember this event 50 years ago. It meant so much to me. It meant a lot to my career."

Andretti's lone Indy 500 win came in 1969. His Formula 1 world championship was earned in 1978. His class win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans was secured in 1995. But on his personal timeline, Daytona 1967 is the milestone that launched his peerless career into orbit.

Returning to the scene that played a significant part in making Mario Andretti into Mario Andretti—a man who went onto become the most accomplished driver in any era—will be a fitting final chapter at Daytona for the 76-year-old icon .

Better late than never.

Listen to Mario's full account of his 1966 Daytona 500 debut and the tumultuous encounters on the way to winning the 1967 race in his podcast below:

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