Insider: How Andretti Autosport lost more than $1 million in 2024 Leaders Circle payments

SALINAS, Calif. – The final spot in IndyCar’s 2024 Leaders Circle program – and its $1 million – came down to a couple hundred yards on pitlane, race control preventing Devlin DeFrancesco from leaving his pit box one final time and a single point across the season’s point standings.

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing will receive what Penske Entertainment Corp. president and CEO Mark Miles says will likely be a sizable bump in each Leaders Circle member’s annual award – from just over $900,000 per car to as much as $1.3 million in 2024. Andretti Autosport will miss out on that windfall.

And with Michael Andretti noncommittal whether his team will continue operating four full-time cars next season or drop down to the drivers they currently have signed (Colton Herta, Kyle Kirkwood and Marcus Ericsson), Sunday’s results could lead to a change in IndyCar’s full-time entrant list for 2024.

Setting the stage

The owners and drivers of nine full-time cars found themselves fighting for the final five paying spots entering Sunday’s race. At the top, A.J. Foyt Racing’s No. 14 (Santino Ferrucci) and Meyer Shank Racing’s No. 06 (Helio Castroneves) were all but locked in, sitting 18^th and 19^th, respectively, and at least 30 points above the cutline. At the other end of the spectrum, Dale Coyne Racing’s No. 51 (Sting Ray Robb) and Foyt’s No. 55 (Benjamin Pedersen) required a podium or victory to have an outside shot at snagging a spot.

Here’s where the standings sat entering the season-finale:

18. Foyt No. 14…201 points

19. MSR No. 06…200 points

20. ECR No. 20…179 points

21. RLL No. 30…172 points

22. AA No. 29…169 points

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23. MSR No. 60…166 points

24. JHR No. 78…164 points

25. DCR No. 51…129 points

26. Foyt No. 55…115 points

Insider: Scott Dixon survives IndyCar season-finale chaos at Laguna Seca

Outside Defrancesco and the No. 29, here’s a brief synopsis on how the days of the other eight played out:

>>Ryan Hunter-Reay, ECR No. 20: 10^th; after starting 25^th, Hunter-Reay found himself 14^th on Lap 6 after the big Lap 1 crash. He took the No. 20’s first top-10 since Conor Daly’s Indy 500; plenty good enough to keep ECR in the Leaders Circle.

>>Sting Ray Robb, DCR No. 51: 12^th; Robb gained eight spots while weaving through the Lap 1 melee and maintained his position his best IndyCar finish in his rookie year. Still, the No. 51 finished 31 points outside the cutline.

>>Helio Castroneves, MSR No. 06: 13^th; in the final non-Indy 500 IndyCar race of his career, Castroneves started last, gained 10 spots on Lap 1, survived a two-rotation spin on Lap 26, damaged his front wing on Lap 36 and collided with Colton Herta on Lap 74. Somehow, some way, the series legend kept his car rolling for his ninth top-15 of the year and sixth in the last seven races. His car finished well clear of the cutline.

>>Agustin Canapino, JHR No. 78: 14^th; after five finishes of 20^th or worse, Canapino ran inside the top-5 near the end of the race but dropped six spots in the final 10 laps. Still, it was good enough to jump from five points below the cutline in 24^th to two points clear in 21^st.

>>Benjamin Pedersen, Foyt No. 55: 16^th; a jump from 23^rd to 12^th at the start was negated by a flat tire from contact with Scott McLaughlin before being spun by Will Power just short of halfway. Though he managed his second-best finish of the year, it wasn’t the miracle he needed to secure an important payday.

>>Santino Ferrucci, Foyt No. 14: 17^th; Ferrucci jumped from 17^th to 9^th at the start and had his eyes on a top-5 mid-race, despite being run off-course at high speeds by McLaughlin on Lap 37. But on Lap 62, he was caught up in a minor restart crash that forced a change of his front wing. Still, his performance was good enough to hang onto his spot.

>>Juri Vips, RLL No. 30: 24^th; the rookie who starred on-track this weekend, qualifying7^th, was tagged two turns into the race by teammate Graham Rahal from contact instigated by Marcus Armstrong. Though Vips managed to return to the track, he finished 24 laps down in what most of the race felt like a devastating result for RLL. More to come.

>>Tom Blomqvist, MSR No. 60: 26th; after gaining 10 spots at the start from 21^st, Blomqvist was a consistent top-10 presence until Lap 62 when he was tagged on a restart with damage bad enough to end his day while running 13^th. That freefall left him seven points below the Leaders Circle cutline.

Here are the final entrant points results near the bottom:

18. MSR No. 06…217 points

19. Foyt No. 14…214 points

20. ECR No. 20…199 points

21. JHR No. 78…180 points

22.RLL No. 30…178 points

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23. AA No. 29…177 points

24. MSR No. 60…171 points

25. DCR No. 51…147 points

26. Foyt No. 55…129 points

Devlin DeFrancesco's late controversial free-fall

A single point separated the No. 30 and No. 29 cars. Had the cars tied, their positions would’ve been swapped by virtue of IndyCar’s tiebreaker procedure that looks at a car’s best finish of the year (or number of said finishes, if necessary). DeFrancesco’s 12^th-place run on the streets of Detroit would’ve narrowly trumped Jack Harvey’s 13^th-place finish at Long Beach.

Through the race’s halfway point, DeFrancesco was on-track to be safe, having jumped from 26^th to 13^th on Lap 1 and managing to trundle along in 10^th or better by the time the race’s chaotic run of cautions began on Lap 29. By Lap 57, though, DeFrancesco had drifted back to 16^th and was in trouble.

While battling wheel-to-wheel with the lapped car of David Malukas, DeFrancesco barreled through the Turn 3 braking zone with the Coyne car on the outside, tagging the No. 18 on the right side and sending both cars off-track. Both would continue, but DeFrancesco's race would only get worse.

Though it wasn't clear to those watching the race broadcast at the time, DeFrancesco stated on Twitter after the race that he suffered contact on the Lap 73 restart while he was running 3rd. The incident caused damage to his gearbox, which, as NBC's James Hinchcliffe explained on the broadcast, forced his car to have to run in 'emergency mode', which meant he'd have to lift off the throttle each time he needed to shift. In the first half of that restart lap, he quickly lost four spots down to 7th.

Then, IndyCar handed DeFrancesco a drive-thru penalty for avoidable contact on Malukas, which dropped him further down to 16th on Lap 74, but still on the lead-lap. Still, with as little as 12 laps to go, DeFrancesco was maintaining 15^th and still on the lead-lap.

Then this story really jumped off the rails.

DeFrancesco pitted on Lap 84 of the 95-lap race, putting him one lap down in 18^th. Beyond this point, IndyCar's and Andretti Autosport’s versions of this story diverge.

According to an IndyCar series official, the No. 29 was black-flagged for running afoul of its 105% rule, meaning DeFrancesco was running lap times that, when measured in seconds, were consistently 5% slower than the leaders.

And it wasn’t close.

As the race’s leader and eventual winner Scott Dixon was rattling off green-flag laps in the 1:09s, DeFrancesco was a couple seconds either side of 1:20 the rest of the race once it went green for the final time on Lap 78. When those calls are made, teams are allowed to bring its car in and make changes to help its car return to relatively competitive speeds.

IndyCar says that call for the No. 29 to pit came on Lap 88, where timing and scoring data does show the car turn a considerably long lap – even for traditional pitstop scenarios (1:50.3689). IndyCar then says the No. 29 was allowed to complete Lap 89 uninhibited and then came through pitlane on its own accord to drive thru on Lap 90.

Before he boarded his flight home Sunday evening, the No. 29’s race strategist Scott Harner told IndyStar he remembered the sequence differently – that Andretti Autosport brought DeFrancesco in to drive thru pitlane to avoid holding up the leaders on Lap 88 before making its changes under black-flag conditions on Lap 90.

In reality, which version of that portion of the story matters very little.

What does is what took place on Lap 91, with DeFrancesco now three laps down to the leaders in 21^st with Josef Newgarden the closest car behind in 22^nd, four laps down. IndyCar asserts it did not order DeFrancesco into the pits for a third time in four laps – maintaining that the team called the No. 29 in.

But once it was stopped in its box near the back of pitlane, race officials stood in front of the car and would not allow it to leave. Said Harner in a text message to IndyStar: “The official told us we had to pit, and they wouldn’t let us leave.”

DeFrancesco had completed 90 laps and was just a couple-hundred yards from ticking off his 91^st. Per IndyCar rules, he is credited with having completed 91 laps, because cars in pitlane at the checkered flag are ruled to have completed that lap they were on.

It meant that, though DeFrancesco completed 90 laps well before Newgarden, DeFrancesco wasn't allowed to cross the start-finish line in pitlane by IndyCar. So Newgarden 'officially' completed his 91st lap before DeFrancesco. That opportunity advanced the No. 2 Chevy from 22^nd to 21^st in the final results in a swap with DeFrancesco that lost the Andretti entry a point (9 to 8) in the race.

And that lost point dropped the No. 29 from a tie for 22^nd in entrant points that it would’ve won over RLL’s No. 30 to falling one point shy in maybe the most painful way possible.

“We even asked to just leave the pit box and stop in pitlane after the start-finish line,” Harner told IndyStar. “They wouldn’t let us.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Andretti Autosport loses $1 million on last lap of 2023 season