If you didn’t know any better, legendary race car driver Mario Andretti looked Friday, April 8, as if he could compete in Sunday’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.

There he was, dressed in full pro driver uniform, complete with a helmet, slipping easily into the cockpit of a two-seater IndyCar. Andretti was about to take a passenger for the ride of his life around the Long Beach race track at speeds of up to 170 mph on the Shoreline Drive straightaway. Andretti was scheduled to take several passengers around the track Friday and Saturday.

Andretti just turned 82 on Feb. 28. But he is healthy and fit and still filled with his lifelong passion for racing, which started burning in him when he was a teenager in Italy.

When asked if he wished he could drive in the big race on Sunday, Andretti demurred, though perhaps a little wistfully.

“I had a long and enjoyable career and count my blessings every day as far as my racing career,” the superstar said. “I definitely feel very fulfilled. Now, I enjoy driving the two-seater and following my son Michael’s team.”

Andretti said he enjoys driving race enthusiasts around the track — it’s a chance to meet interesting folks.

“They usually give me interesting people,” he said. “I think everyone has fun. I don’t know if they’re scared but I always go as fast as I can. I’ve driven people of different walks of life.”

Those who ride with him sign a wall in his traler, he said.

“The most memorable might be Lady Gaga,” Andretti said while sharing photos on his cell phone. “We had a lot of time together in Indianapolis.”

Indianapolis, home of the Indy 500, is sacred ground in racing.

But Andretti has had a love affair with Long Beach — and vice versa — ever since he drove in the first race on the city’s streets in 1975.

He has not missed a Grand Prix of Long Beach race in 47 years. He has been either a driver or a spectator during all of those years. His early relationship with the city blossomed in 1977, when Andretti, Jody Scheckter of South Africa and Niki Lauda of Austria put on one of the most spectacular driving exhibitions that Formula 1 had ever seen, according to someone who was there, Chris Pook, founder of the Grand Prix of Long Beach.

Andretti remembers that race like it was yesterday.

“I had a helluva time behind Schecter for most of the race and Lauda was behind me,” Andretti said said in a phone interview from his longtime home in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, before he flew to Long Beach on Thursday. “It was do-or-die time and I finally was able to pass Schecter.”

Andretti held on and won the race, beating Lauda by less than a second.

The win made Andretti a happy man.

But perhaps even happier were Pook and city officials, who had been counting on the Grand Prix to boost declining economic development in the city. The first two years were rough on the Grand Prix financially. It was on shaky ground — until Andretti won.

“It was the first time in Grand Prix history that an American won a Grand Prix in his own country, and the media went crazy,” Pook said. “Long Beach and Mario were on the front pages of the nation’s major newspapers and featured on network TV stations and the front pages of sports sections in newspapers around the world.

“Mario’s win made a statement,” Pook added. “The Grand Prix of Long Beach had arrived and it was here to stay.”

Andretti’s his first impressions of Long Beach, though, were not that good.

“Before then, I had never been to Long Beach,” he said. “When I got there in 1975, there were lots of boarded up places. But thanks to Pook’s vision, the race has grown and so has the city. It is a wonderful place now.”

Andretti’s 1977 win wasn’t the only time he helped Long Beach, Pook said.

A year later, Long Beach officials invited key business leaders, bankers and developers to attend the 1978 Grand Prix as the city’s guests, Pook said. One of those guests was A.N. Pritzker, chairman of Hyatt Hotels.

“On the Saturday before the race, then City Manager John Dever, with Mr. Pritzker in tow, asked me if someone could drive Mr. Pritzker around in a Pace Car,” Pook said. “This was right before qualifying was to start, one of the most important times of a Grand Prix weekend for a driver. Mario was asked if he would drive Mr. Pritzker and, without hesitation, Mario said, ‘Absolutely.’”

The ride was supposed to be two laps — but it turned into four.

Afterwards, Pritzker thanks Andretti and then turned to Dever.

“If you have enough spirit and determination to run this race through your streets,” the hotelier told Dever, according to Pook, “I am going to build a Hyatt Regency here, and I would like it to be located on that corner before the race track comes back up the hill to the Pit area.”

The Hyatt Regency has been a mainstay in Long Beach ever since.

Andretti ranks “right at the top of people who were instrumental in the success and longevity of the Grand Prix of Long Beach,” Pook said, “and I would respectfully suggest the redevelopment of our downtown.”

Andretti and his family have had great racing fortune in Long Beach.

After winning the race in 1977, Andretti went on to win the Grand Prix of Long Beach in 1984, 1985 and 1987. His son, Michael Andretti, won in Long Beach in 1986 — ending his father’s bid for a three-peat — and again in 2002.

The elder Andretti, a proud father, pointed out that his son’s wins in Long Beach were the first and last of his total 42 wins in IndyCar races.

“We have had a lot of great thrills and precious golden memories in Long Beach,” Andretti said.

One of his favorite things about Long Beach, he said, is the ambiance it creates.

“The people in Long Beach are so welcoming,” Andretti said. “Everywhere I go, I hear people calling out to me, ‘Hey, Mario, how are you doing?’ It’s almost like feeling I’m part of a family when I come here.”

While he was at the track Friday, fans constantly asked him for autographs and selfies. He was always kind and accommodating.

Speaking of family, Andretti talked about his birth on Feb. 28, 1940, in Montona, Italy (now Croatia), about 35 miles from the city of Trieste.

After World War II, the peninsula of Istria, on which Montona was located, became part of Yugoslavia, a Communist country. In 1948, the family decided to leave and they became refugees in a camp in Lucca, Italy, for seven years. The family of five – his parents, Luigi and Rina; a twin brother, Aldo; and an older sister, Ana Maria — came to the United States in 1955 and settled in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, where an uncle was living.

Andretti’s father got a job working for Bethlehem Steel. Andretti was 15.

“On June 16, 1955, we passed by the Statue of Liberty, a day I’ll never forget,” Andretti said. “My sister sang the national anthem. We never looked back.

“I learned an important lesson in life when we came to the U.S.,” he added. “A negative turned into a positive. The United States opened up opportunities for us that we never would have had in Italy.”

But before he came to the United States, Andretti and his twin brother had gone to Monza, Italy, to watch the Italian Grand Prix and world champion Alberto Ascari — Andretti’s idol.

“That’s when I decided to become a race driver,” Andretti said. “I didn’t know how, but I knew I was going to pursue that one and only dream. I never had a Plan B.”

When Andretti arrived in the U.S., he said, he was excited to see a race track near his home. It was a half-mile oval track around which modified stock cars raced. Andretti and his brother got involved with racing there without telling their father, Andretti said. Their father would have forbidden them from racing, Andretti said, because of the danger involved.

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Unfortunately, his twin, Aldo, got injured in a crash and their father found out they had been racing.

His reaction, Andretti said, was “not pleasant.”

But Andretti kept racing.

Andretti’s Plan A worked out beautifully, of course, as he went on to win the Indy 500 and hundreds of other races — while becoming an icon and legend in his profession.

Yet, the past 3 1/2 years have been difficult for him, with Andretti describing that period as a “rough stretch.” During that time, his wife of 56 years, his twin brother, his sister and his nephew John have died. Andretti has leaned on his faith amid all that loss.

“My Catholic religion is helping,” he said. “There are some things beyond our control. You just have to accept them and move on.”

This week at least, Andretti will enjoy himself in Long Beach, the city he’s visited annually for nearly five decades.

Come Sunday, he will root for his son’s Andretti Autosport team.

And on Saturday, Andretti will once again hop in a race car. He’ll take some lucky people on a ride around the track of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach — a race he helped establish.

Staff photographer Brittany Murray contributed to this report.