Auto Racing: What Is This Danger?

"I don't have any feeling ofaccomplishment about anything unless there's a lot of risk to it," says Mario Andretti. He was already racing automobiles—90-m.p.h. Formula Juniors—in Italy at an age when no state in the U.S. would have given him a license to drive the family Volkswagen: 13. "I was crazy," he agrees, now that he is 27. "None of my relatives even knew what I was doing except my old priest uncle, and I had him hiding it because I told him in confession so he couldn't tell."

Born near Trieste, diminutive (5 ft. 6 in., 135...