Don’t ask questions, just do it. Who are you to question Mario Andretti? Fortunately, this S2000 owner and friend of Jalopnik gave the racing legend exactly what he asked for.
Here’s the backstory: As they’ve done for years now, Mid-Ohio invited a bunch of Honda S2000 owners to do the parade lap before the Honda Indy 200 this weekend. When I was there covering the race, Jalopnik reader and S2000 owner Sam reached out to me and very generously asked if I wanted to ride shotgun in that parade lap.
Sadly that didn’t work out because the parade lap seats were for VIPs, not regular old garbage human beings like me, but no worries. Then Sam got something fantastic: a request from Andretti himself for some of those sweet, sweet VTEC revs, which you can see above.
Here’s Sam to recount the time he met Andretti last year and got so starstruck he mixed his generations up a little bit:
Last year I met Mario, took a shitty selfie, and stated to him that I had his SON [actually his grandson Marco] for the parade lap. I was star struck by his appearance and screwed that one up. Everyone knows that there is a Michael between the two of them.
This year Mario made me forget all about that while asking for some revs while staged and telling me to do a burnout while Tristan Vautier got on my car for the parade lap! My driver started DFL and finished 6th!
Don’t worry, Sam. I saw Mario Andretti out and about that day and I had no clue what I’d say to him either, besides a bunch of nervous mumbling while I stared at my shoes. At least you got to let your engine do the talking for you.
Contact the author at patrick@jalopnik.com.