Mario Andretti Eyes Comeback For 1 More Race With Son, Grandson

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Mario Andretti watches the action from pit lane during Indianapolis 500 practice at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 12, 2013 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

LONG POND, Pa. -- Mario Andretti wants one more race, family style.

At 73, Andretti has been long retired from racing, and one of open wheels all-time greats hasn't turned a competitive lap since a spectacular crash during practice for the 2003 Indianapolis 500.

Andretti, though, hasn't completely put the idea of one final race out of his mind. He's serious when he says he wants to team up with son, Michael, and grandson, Marco, for an endurance race like the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona or 24 Hours of Le Mans.

"I'd do it," Mario Andretti said. "There's no point in me coming back unless there's a compelling a reason."

And there's no more compelling reason than family ties on the track.

Don't start dreaming of the greatest comeback in motor sports just yet. There's one big hitch.

"Marco would do it. Michael doesn't want to do it," Mario said. "He's much younger than I am and he says he's too old. You figure that out. But if I can convince Michael to do it, I'll do it. I would. I still have the competitive spirit, which is good."

His grandfather's dream of an Andretti reunion seemed like fun for 26-year-old Marco, who posted fast practice times this week at Pocono Raceway. The third-generation driver said Mario would be "up to the task," of becoming a tag-team partner in the annual races.

"He would start and finish and dad and I would do all the brunt work," Marco Andretti said.

Told Michael had balked, Marco hardly seemed surprised.

"I think dad doesn't love it like me and my grandfather," he said. "He was just very good and he knew he was good. But I think he's really happy and content where he's at and he's doing a heck of a job there, too, as an owner."

Mario Andretti won the Indianapolis 500 in 1969 and went on to a long, brilliant career before he retired from IndyCar in 1994. He last got behind the wheel for a lap in 2003 when he tested a car for Michael at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Andretti's car hit debris left when Kenny Brack's car hit the wall, sending his car flying through the air and flipping end over end. He walked away unhurt.

"I figured, I'm going to meet my creator. I didn't know which way I was going to go," he said. "But I was OK. It wasn't my fault. I was in my element. I was lucky as hell. I landed on the wheels and only got a scratch."

But that was it for Andretti. Even though he won Indy and Michael has celebrated two 500 victories as an owner, the accident is just another part of the "Andretti Curse," that reigns at IMS.

"They always have to talk about something," Mario said. "But we've had great times there, just tough times really finishing when we were dominating. Not only myself, Michael as well. Were we capable of winning multiple times? Damn right."

Pocono, back on the IndyCar slate for the first time since 1989, is a hometown track for the Andrettis, who hail from nearby Nazareth. But Mario's been commuting this week from his house near Lake Wallenpaupack, about an hour north of the track.

He's also keeping busy. Andretti voices a character in the upcoming movie "Turbo," the animated story of a snail with amazing speed who takes on the Indianapolis 500.

While he no longer attends each race, he feels IndyCar can rival or top any series in the world when it comes to quality competition. Even if TV ratings and attendance can use a boost, the on-track product is as strong as ever.

"Look at the quality of racing, just in the last two years," he said. "It's there. It's something you can't predict. When it happens, you just try to enjoy it. It's riveting."

_____

Follow Dan Gelston at http://www.Twitter.com/APGelston

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Mario Livio: Humans, Stars, and the Big Bang

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: Saving Our Species From Another Mass Extinction Mario Livio Become a fan   Humans, Stars, and the Big Bang 0 0 0 0 Posted: 07/05/2013 8:00 AM Updated: 07/05/2013

Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.

In his famous book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Charles Darwin insightfully concluded: "We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits and an inhabitant of the Old World. This creature, if its whole structure had been examined by a naturalist, would have been classed among the Quadrumana [primates with four 'hands,' such as apes], as surely as the still more ancient progenitor of the Old and New World monkeys." These bold ideas have inspired the tireless efforts by many members of the Leakey family to search for and discover fossil hominids in Africa.

But, what about the most fundamental building blocks of life itself? Where did the atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, phosphorus, and iron (all essential for life) come from? When Joni Mitchell sang "We are stardust," she was poetically giving the correct answer to this question.

In a monumental paper published in 1957, astrophysicists Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, Willy Fowler and Fred Hoyle proposed that most of the chemical elements were synthesized from hydrogen and helium in the nuclear furnaces at the centers of stars. Hoyle, in particular, explained how during the process of stellar evolution, stars continuously battle against gravity. In the absence of a force to oppose gravity's attraction, stars would have simply collapsed to their centers. By 'igniting' nuclear fusion reactions in their cores, stars generate extremely high pressures that support them against their own weight. After each nuclear fuel is consumed (first hydrogen fuses into helium, then helium into carbon, carbon into oxygen, and so on), gravity causes the core to contract, thereby increasing the temperature and initiating the next nuclear reaction. This way, new elements are synthesized all the way up to iron--the most stable nucleus. Depending on the initial mass of the star, its outer layers are ejected into interstellar space either through a relatively gentle process known as a planetary nebula (if the star's mass is less than about eight times the mass of the Sun; Figure 1), or via a dramatic explosion known as a supernova (if the star is more massive than eight solar masses; Figure 2). Atoms heavier than iron are synthesized during the explosions.

Figure 1. The "Cat's Eye" nebula. Credit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).

All the forged and subsequently ejected elements enrich the interstellar gas from which later generations of stars, planets, and life form. No wonder that the Burbidges, Fowler, and Hoyle started their epoch-making paper with a quote from William Shakespeare's King Lear: "It is the stars, the stars above us, govern our conditions."

And what about hydrogen and helium? As it turned out, Hoyle and his collaborators did not manage to account for the cosmic abundances of the lightest elements (hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, and boron) by forming them inside stars. For those, physicists George Gamow and Ralph Alpher had another brilliant idea -- they formed in the initial, extremely hot and dense state of the universe known as the Big Bang.

The picture that emerges is absolutely amazing. The individual atoms that form the two strands of our DNA may have originated billions of years ago at the centers of different stars. And the hydrogen atoms -- that hold the basic structures of our proteins together -- date all the way back to the Big Bang. This grand scheme for the history of life's ingredients gives a whole new meaning to Darwin's profound pronouncement: "Man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."

Figure 2. The ring around Supernova 1987A. Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Challis (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics).

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Mario Chalmers Implores LeBron James, Heat To 'Go For The Kill' In Game 2 Win Over Spurs (VIDEO)

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Mario Chalmers of the Miami Heat celebrates while playing against the San Antonio Spurs during Game Two of the 2013 NBA Finals on June 9, 2013 at American Airlines Arena in Miami, Florida.

MIAMI -- Mario Chalmers marched toward midcourt with a message.

"I felt like we had them on the ropes at the time. I told him, `Let's go for the kill,'" Chalmers said. "He said, `I'm with you.'"

And once LeBron James joined in, the Miami Heat were back with a blowout in Game 2 of the NBA Finals.

Chalmers led the charge, James broke out to finish it with a flurry and the Heat used a 33-5 run to rout the San Antonio Spurs 103-84 on Sunday night and even the series at one game apiece.

James missed 10 of 13 shots through three quarters and the Heat trailed by a point late in the period before unleashing the lethal brand of basketball that led them to a franchise-record 66 wins this season.

Chalmers finished with 19 points, and James had 17 points, eight rebounds, seven assists and three blocks – the best on Tiago Splitter's dunk attempt – while shooting only 7 of 17 from the field.

For two days following Game 1, the thought was that James needed to do more for his teammates. Turns out, it was Chalmers and the supporting cast who did something for James.

"Honestly, for me, when I was struggling offensively, my teammates continued to keep it in range," James said. " And we even had a lead at one point, especially late in the second quarter when we made that run and I was struggling a little bit.

"So I think Rio more than anybody kept us aggressive, him getting into the paint, him getting those and-ones and making a couple of 3s. It allowed me to sit back and wait for my time."

The Heat made 10 of 19 3-pointers and got 13 points from Ray Allen, and 12 points and 10 rebounds from the previously slumping Chris Bosh.

Danny Green made all six shots, including five 3-pointers, and scored 17 points for the Spurs. They host Game 3 on Tuesday night.

Tony Parker had 13 points on 5-of-14 shooting for the Spurs, who were so precise in their 92-88 victory in Game 1 but threw the ball all over the white-surrounded court Sunday, committing 17 turnovers that led to 19 Miami points.

"In the second half they just run us over," the Spurs' Manu Ginobili said. "We didn't move the ball at all. Their pressure really got us on our heels."

Tim Duncan shot 3 of 13 and finished with nine points and 11 rebounds.

"We didn't play well. We didn't shoot well. I know I played awfully," Duncan said. "Whatever it may be, they responded better than us. So hopefully we can look forward to this Game 3 and regain some of our composure."

James insisted he wouldn't force himself to do more after he had a triple-double in Game 1 but never seized the opportunity to take control of the scoring as the game was slipping away from the Heat.

He didn't need to. Not with Chalmers making big shots, the Heat's defense forcing the Spurs to look shaky all over the floor, and a barrage of second-half 3-pointers.

James finally got some openings late, hanging from the rim an extra second not long after a sensational blocked shot freed him up for a fast break.

The often-maligned Chalmers is frequently found in Heat highlights being yelled at by James or another Miami veteran. But he's as cocky as any of the superstars in Miami, and he has the big-moment plays to back up his bravado, from a tying shot for Kansas in the 2008 NCAA championship game to his 25 points in Game 4 of last year's finals.

"You have to have guts to play with our guys. If you don't, you get swallowed up," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "The good thing about it is the other guys were fine with him making plays."

The point guard sparked the Heat late in the third, after San Antonio had taken a 62-61 lead. He converted two three-point plays, Allen and Mike Miller nailed 3-pointers, and James made only his third field goal of the game during a 14-3 finishing spurt that sent Miami to the fourth with a 75-65 advantage.

They opened the fourth with nine straight points to make it 84-65, and capped the run at 94-67 when James made a 3-pointer, erasing any chance of their first two-game losing streak in five months.

"We were just a little bit more active today," Bosh said. "We really just made an emphasis to continue to try to corral them."

The Spurs had only four turnovers in Game 1, tying an NBA Finals record low. But they surpassed that total in the first quarter, Parker committing two of their five after not coughing it up once in the opener, and the Spurs looked more like the sloppy Indiana Pacers from Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals than the Spurs of Game 1.

The unrecognizable play continued, Parker firing passes on the pick-and-roll right into a Heat player's leg on multiple occasions and even getting yanked barely three minutes into the third quarter after his struggles continued.

The Spurs responded with seven straight points without him to get back within one. But by the end of the period, it was Chalmers who was the best point guard on the floor.

The Heat dropped Game 1 in last year's finals, and the first two to Dallas in 2006 before going on to win both titles. But those early deficits came on the road, so Dwyane Wade said Sunday's game was a "must-win game" for the Heat.

They arrived to white shirts hanging on the seats that read "Larry loves Miami" with a picture of the Larry O'Brien trophy that goes to the NBA champion.

Larry's not leaving, not if the Heat keep playing like this.

They looked as good as ever in the final 15 minutes of their 100th game of the season, pouring it on and leaving Spurs coach Gregg Popovich often standing with his arms folded on the sideline, with no answers and no way of slowing down the Heat speedsters.

San Antonio had its seven-game postseason winning streak snapped, as well as a six-game NBA Finals win streak that dated to the 2005 finals.

Duncan, who started 0 of 5 in the opener before finishing with 20 points and 14 rebounds, began 1 for 5 in this one. But he never got untracked, though part of the problem was the Spurs' inability to get him the ball enough because of their turnovers.

Wade finished with 10 points and six assists. Miami committed just six turnovers.

Notes: The Spurs remained at 131 playoff wins, two back of the Lakers for most in the NBA since 1997, when Duncan was drafted. ... Clippers veteran Chauncey Billups, a former NBA Finals MVP, was chosen Sunday as the first winner of the NBA's Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year Award. It was named for Maurice Stokes, who was paralyzed in an on-court accident in 1958, and teammate Jack Twyman, who became Stokes' legal guardian and watched over him for 12 years until Stokes died in 1970.

___

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