Michael Andretti navigating IndyCar rollercoaster while waiting on answer for Formula 1 bid

NEWTON, Iowa – In a matter of days, Michael Andretti may have his global motorsports team standing atop a major racing season-long championship podium for the first time in more than a decade. He hopes it can be a catalyst toward a rip-roaring next 18 months that could see the birth of an expansion Formula 1 franchise, moving into part of a new $200 million, 575,000 square-foot headquarters in Fishers and, perhaps, the forging of relationships that could finally lead to a NASCAR Cup series team.

To those on the outside, it all sounds chaotic, with trips to Rome, Geneva, middle-of-nowhere-Iowa and London in the span of two weeks, all to watch the closing stretch of Jake Dennis’s title push in Formula E, put the finishing touches on the FIA’s interview process for Andretti Global’s bid to join the F1 grid in 2025 and to continue pulling the strings on crafting his IndyCar lineup for 2024.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

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“I’m OK, it’s part of the game,” Andretti told IndyStar in an exclusive sit-down at IndyCar’s Hy-Vee doubleheader at Iowa Speedway last weekend, doing his best to hide his exhaustion and growing frustrations from a taxing weekend in the middle of this grueling summer stretch. “There’s always something, and we’re never 100% everywhere, but I know that. If one series is going good, the other one isn’t, and then the next year, you have the other one rolling well. That’s just part of the gig, part of the challenge.

“But none of these projects take away from each other, and that’s the key. If anything, they’re additive and helping each other, but you’ve always got to make sure one’s not draining the other. That’s why, when people say, ‘You’re too thin’, well, no, we’re actually getting thicker. We’re adding people, brands, expertise. We’ve got enough resources for each team that one doesn’t steal from the other. I sort of laugh sometimes when people say I’m spreading myself too thin, because as long as we’ve got the right people running these programs and we’re resourced up, we’re good. They’ve all got to stand on their own.”

The 60-year-old team co-owner will watch with bated breath this weekend as his team’s lead Formula E driver Jake Dennis enters the London ePrix doubleheader finale weekend with a 24-point lead over Envision Racing’s Nick Cassidy. With 25 points up for grabs for the victor in each of this weekend’s races – and points paid out to as low as 10^th-place – Dennis would easily wrap things up with a repeat of his 1^st and 4^th-place finishes in Rome earlier this month or his 1^st and 2^nd-place finishes in London a year ago when he tied for 5^th in the championship in his second season with Andretti.

Elsewhere, Andretti has entries as high as 3^rd (IMSA GTP class), 4^th (Indy NXT), 5^th (Supercars) and 6^th (Extreme E). Somewhat ironically, IndyCar, the series where he and his famous father Mario put the Andretti name on the map, represents Andretti Autosport’s most high-profile struggles for 2023 (if you exclude persuading F1 executives regarding expansion). At the moment, Colton Herta sits 8th as lead Andretti driver in the championship, just 54 points out of 4th but 43 ahead of 12th.

A year ago, Andretti blamed pitlane miscues and general sloppy performances for his team’s series of shortcomings in recent years that had led to Alexander Rossi’s lengthy winless streak before the series veteran left the team, Herta’s slip back in the championship from 3^rd (2020) to 10^th (2022) and the general chaos that had been the team’s other two full-time rides in recent years that, from 2020-22, had been occupied by five different drivers. During the season-opening weekend at St. Pete, he sat in the media center, grinning with joy as he was flanked by Herta and Romain Grosjean, who had locked out the race’s front row, with teammate Kyle Kirkwood also making a Fast Six appearance in his debut with the team.

“Hopefully, our pitstops and strategy will be better,” Andretti told the assembled media that afternoon. “We’ve really tried to be a lot more detail-oriented, and I hope it pays off. We had many races last year with fast cars, but we shot ourselves in the foot one way or another so many times.”

And those “fast cars” of 2022 were nothing, Andretti said then, compared to his team’s rampant offseason developments that he believed would have three of his four drivers in the mix for poles and wins each weekend – and hopefully a championship push.

For better or worse, the speed has been there virtually every single weekend – outside Iowa, a track that the team once dominated and now struggles to land top-10s at. The attention to detail across a season that has featured 11 DNFs, multiple strategist shakeups, a handed-away race win at Road America, teammates colliding in pitlane during the Indianapolis 500, five poles and just a single win, Andretti said, is still sorely lacking.

If it’s not a faulty wheel gun handing Herta a 40-plus second pitstop in Iowa, it’s the driver nailing a bump wrong entering pitlane that forced a double-hit of the pitlane speed-limiter that led to an ensuing speeding penalty and the end of his hopes at his first podium of the year at Mid-Ohio.

Then, there’s the bungled end of the race sequence at Road America that Andretti himself owns up to. Herta, the weekend’s pole-sitter, had a several-second lead on eventual race-winner Alex Palou, but Andretti said he was too focused on tire wear and panicked, calling Herta in as soon as the window opened – one lap sooner than the rest of the leaders – and forced his driver into a massive fuel-save down the stretch that dropped him to 5th by the checkered flag.

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“What I make of it all is we did a great job over the winter. I think we have fast cars, outside qualifying at Indy – though I think we had the two fastest cars in the race – and (Iowa) has been a little frustrating, but everywhere else, we’ve had the cars to win, and either the team or the drivers shoot themselves in the foot,” Andretti said. “It’s been very frustrating, and we’ve been working very hard to refine things and put things in place to make sure we don’t make stupid mistakes again."

When asked about team management cycling Herta through three different strategists in the first half of the year – from his father, Bryan, then new hire Scott Harner for Race 2 at Texas and finally switching to team COO Rob Edwards by Mid-Ohio – Andretti said it's in hopes of finding fits for the future. By no means does he consider 2023 a lost season – “I think we’re capable of 2-3 more wins” – but there are big projects on the horizon, and Andretti wants to shore up what he can now.

“You do it in the offseason, and you don’t know what you have – especially now with where we are in the championship,” Andretti said. “Let’s go get ourselves set for next year and get our combos down that we think are right. I think we’re getting closer.

“I think McLaren makes a lot of the same mistakes we do, and the two that aren’t making as many mistakes are Penske and Ganassi. They’ve had the same people for 30 years, basically, and have all their systems down better than we do. We’ve got to get to that point, and that’s our challenge at the moment. Last year, I don’t think our cars were as competitive on top of it all, but we know it’s a problem and if you know that, you know what to work on to fix it.”

For what it’s worth, Kirkwood, who’s on the first season of a multi-year deal, and Herta, who signed an extension last offseason through 2027, seem settled with the elder Herta and Edwards, respectively. Who will partner next to them in 2024 is a different story entirely.

Andretti said his team’s plans for next season are to remain at four full-time cars – and four fully-funded ones at that – but whether outgoing driver Devlin DeFrancesco can manage to keep his car in the top-23 in entrant points to earn the team the roughly $1 million Leader Circle check for next year, and whether the team can sign more outside sponsorship in the coming weeks will play major roles in those goals.

As it’s long been presumed, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Ericsson sits near the top of Andretti’s wish list on the free agent market, with the 2022 Indy 500 winner’s exclusivity period with CGR coming to a close in less than a week. Like longtime friend and fellow team owner Zak Brown, Andretti is intrigued by why Ganassi would let Ericsson get this close to hitting the open market.

“I’m surprised Chip didn’t nail him down,” he said of the 32-year-old Swedish driver who sits 4th in the championship at the moment. “I think he’s done a really good job.”

Should Ericsson land at Andretti for a lucrative, paid drive without the expectation of bringing sponsorship that he and his team marked as their line in the sand with Ganassi early this year, Andretti would be faced with whether to pair what will be the team’s only 500-winner and likely highest-finishing driver in this year’s championship with Grosjean, who had a tenuous history with Ericsson in Formula 1 and has worn down the team with his antics on and off the track, according to Andretti.

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Grosjean started the 2023 IndyCar campaign, his second with Andretti, with a pole at St. Pete and a front-running effort at Texas – both of which ended in crashes. Following his back-to-back runner-up finishes at Long Beach and Barber, Andretti told reporters the sides were nearing an extension. The Swiss-born Frenchman’s three DNFs, zero top-10s and loud and unforgiving way in which he’s criticized his team for his lack of performance has Andretti seriously considering hiring a replacement.

“He tends to push it when he doesn’t have the car. Instead of bringing it home 10^th, he tries to push it to 9^th and finishes 28^th, and that’s been really frustrating on our side,” Andretti said, a week after Grosjean lost hold of the steering wheel midway through the Toronto street race while in 12^th and crashed to end in 22^nd. “We’ve had a talk about it, and we’ll see how the rest of the year goes.

“He’s fast. Pleasant guy, great guy, but when it’s negative comments about the team, yeah, that’s frustrating. And it’s not even just me. The guys, they take it to heart, because they’re busting their asses. Everyone makes mistakes – he’s made his share as well. I think that’s where Romain sometimes has a problem controlling his adrenaline. Once he calms down, he’s more measured, but in the heat of the moment, I think he has a problem. It’s probably been his biggest downfall while he’s been here.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Michael Andretti on IndyCar miscues: 'I almost feel like Ferrari last year'