Addition by subtraction: Has Andretti Global remade itself into an IndyCar title contender?
It’s been 20 years, 70 wins and two name changes since Michael Andretti’s IndyCar team scaled up to four full-time entries. Long ago having built the reputation as the sport’s deepest team, the team now known as Andretti Global has run four full-time entries all but twice over the last two decades. They’ve entered at least five cars in the Indianapolis 500 in 16 of those seasons – three times entering six – and have, since the start of 2020, staffed engineering efforts for one, two and now three Meyer Shank Racing entries.
So with virtually every team either growing in recent years or looking to do so, why is IndyCar’s bulkiest squad trimming down?
In short: Because they can.
One year after adding Dan Towriss and his untold millions of dollars to Andretti’s ownership group, the business model has changed drastically, according to team COO Rob Edwards. No longer is the team in need of a high-paying entry at the back of the field that can add an additional data point on race weekends and help fund the other three cars, but do little else. It’s why, even before Andretti’s wild final few laps with Devlin DeFrancesco’s No. 29 at the season-finale that led to the team losing out on the $1 million-plus of a 2024 Leaders Circle spot, Edwards says team leadership had already decided it would have three entries in 2024.
No distractions, no excuses and no shortage of support in pursuit of taking one of IndyCar’s storied brands back to the top. Sunday on the streets of St. Pete – where Andretti Global has won three times and brings the defending race-winner in newcomer Marcus Ericsson, along with Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood – begins a three-year stretch for Andretti Global where it knows it has its entire full-time driver lineup under contract, Edwards revealed to IndyStar.
Andretti Global’s newfound era of stability, Edwards believes, could unlock an Indy 500 and IndyCar title threat that has been largely absent from Michael Andretti’s squad for several years.
“Clearly, it’s been a very conscious decision to become a three-car team and focus on the quality of those three cars for 2024,” Edwards told IndyStar last week. “And there’s an energy that’s driven by exactly that opportunity. It starts with the drivers. They should all have a vested role in the part of the other two drivers, because they’re going to be teammates for a long period of time, so helping to drive the team forward is going to increase all their chances of success."
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The trio enters this new, hopeful collective chapter in 2024 coming off of three very different versions of 2023. The 33-year-old Ericsson spent his last four years at Chip Ganassi Racing, where he changed his reputation as a Formula 1 flame-out to become one of IndyCar’s most consistent, competitive set of hands. He’s finished 6th in points the last three season, logged just four DNFs and two other finishes outside the top-12. By no means are his four wins and nine podiums field-leading, but it puts him in a small class of drivers who’ve earned the right to be seen as legitimate contenders every week.
At Andretti, he’s found a home that was willing to pay him handsomely, allowing the deep-pocketed backers who helped fund his career up until now to put away their checkbooks. With far-and-away the most high-level racing experience among his 23- and 25-year-old teammates, Ericsson steps into a team lacking an unquestioned leader. Having raced in Scott Dixon’s shadow since 2020, Ericsson sees this next chapter as a chance to test his mettle without the need to prove himself.
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“If us three can work together and help each other, push each other forward and get the best out of each one of us, we’re going to be really strong,” Ericsson said back in January. “I think there might be some different dynamics, compared to what I’m used to, but already, we’ve been doing a lot of stuff together, and it’s been working really well.”
Last season was very boom-or-bust for Andretti Global's holdovers. As Herta told reporters earlier this year, “It was a season of whatever could go wrong, did.” The 23-year-old's No. 26 Honda featured three strategists across the first nine races, as Andretti officials struggled to find the proper combination that would benefit the program. And in his only two poles, one of the speediest drivers on the grid could only muster finishes of 11th (Road America) and 5th (Mid-Ohio), plagued by various strategy, pitlane and driver errors.
“It was the first time in my career that I haven’t had a win in a year,” Herta said.
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Kirkwood, who, in his first season with Andretti Global, logged the team’s only wins at Long Beach and Nashville, had higher peaks and lower valleys. His pair of victories came with just five other top-10s – none top-5s. Even still, his bosses see the 2021 Indy Lights champion as a long-term project worth investing in.
“I think me, Marcus and Colton have very, very similar mindsets,” Kirkwood said at preseason Content Days this year. “Knowing that one person isn’t striving to keep their ride with the team or needs to do something to beat their teammates, we’re just in this together to go after wins as a team, go after championships as a team, go after 500s as a team.”
Retooling a championship-caliber team
In order to reach those goals, Andretti and Towriss signed Ericsson, the hottest free agent on the IndyCar market last summer outside of Alex Palou, and changed little else.
The strategists (Edwards and Bryan Herta), crew chiefs (Nick Allen and Scott Marks) and engineers (Nathan O’Rourke and Jeremy Milless) for Herta and Kirkwood return with trusted veterans Tony Houk (crew chief), Eric Bretzman (strategist) and Olivier Boisson (engineer) manning those duties for Ericsson.
Additionally, Andretti Global has created two new positions in team leadership to help streamline communication and encourage top-level results in 2024, promoting Rolando Coronado, the crew chief of Romain Grosjean’s No. 28 a year ago into a floating role across all three cars. And in arguably the most important signing in the entire sport this past offseason – drivers included – Andretti Global hired four-time Champ Car title-winning engineer Craig Hampson as its new senior IndyCar engineer, a role Hampson will assume ahead of the Month of May once he completes his non-compete obligations for leaving Arrow McLaren.
The hiring of, Hampson, one of the brightest and most-accomplished engineering minds in the sport, makes for the perfect encapsulation of Andretti’s entire offseason. The new team official slides into a role that offloads some responsibility from Bretzman, Andretti Global’s technical director across all of its racing efforts, while bringing all three of its cars a deeper and equal level of preparation, support and analysis that Edwards hinted was lacking a times during the team’s four-car days.
“The reason we didn’t get more wins or podiums (in 2023) wasn’t for lack of pace. In most cases, it had to do with a failure to execute, so the focus this offseason has very much been about how we can best execute on race day,” Edwards said.
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The Andretti COO summarized the team’s offseason mindset switch by estimating they had 85-90 IndyCar-dedicated employees a year ago, and they’re at 75-80. Each entry has additional support for car preparation and their race day pit crews. In the shop, Andretti Global stepped up its simulation program engineering staff to make the most of IndyCar’s offseasons with private team testing almost entirely eliminated.
Time will tell just how effective these changes are but one series insider said Andretti Global is starting to again be seen as a dark horse paddock leader – with the source situated outside the team saying they expect Andretti Global to both combine for the most wins in the sport in 2024 and bring home a title to boot.
“We’ve had a lot of great guys on this team, but obviously it’s been a full plate,” Herta said earlier this year. “So being able to concentrate on just three entries and being able to dial-in the (500) cars when you have one less to worry about, you can just spend more time everywhere.
“Everyone gets a little more time in the spotlight.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: How Andretti Global evolved back into a title-contender
