This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,

the show where America is the star and the American people.

If you're an auto racing fan, and even if you're not, Mario Andretti is a name you know,

and for good reason. Aside from his dashing good looks and charisma, he was one of the most

successful drivers in motorsports history. Only one of three drivers to have won races in Formula One, IndyCar, and the world's

sports car championship.

Andretti remains the only driver who have won the Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 500,

and the Formula One World Championship.

Even more remarkably, he's the only person to be named United States Driver of the Year

in three decades.

But it is his story and his unlikely rise in a sport generally accessible only to the rich

and the privilege that is most remarkable of all.

Here is Mario Andretti to tell his story.

Well, I was born in Italy, and the region is East Korea, and however, now it's Croatia.

And the story, obviously, it's one of the reasons why the family immigrated to the States.

Because I was born in 1940 at the beginning of World War II, and a region was under Italy, as it had been. but after the war, Italy lost the war, so they lost

territory, and that's the territory they lost. And Yugoslavia occupied the region under hardline

communism, under Marshall Tito. And there was a choice for all of the inhabitants of the area to succumb to communism

or to maintain the Italian citizenship to leave home and become refugees, basically, back in mainland Italy. And my family chose, you know, the latter part

to maintain the Italian citizenship. And we were refugees in the city of Lucca in Tuscany for seven

and a half years before my dad had the opportunity

...