We are into the final half of the IndyCar teams as we are now 37 days until the St. Petersburg season opener. We move to Andretti Global, re-branded after 14 seasons as Andretti Autosport. We enter this season 11 seasons removed since the organization's most recent championship. It has been six years since its most recent Indianapolis 500 victory. The team has only won three races or more in one of the last five seasons and in only two of the last eight. This year, Andretti Global has reduced its stable to three full-time cars, which coincidentally is the same number of full-time cars the team ran in its last championship season.
At First Glance... All the pieces are there
Andretti Global will have three drivers with a combined 13 victories, all dating since the start of the 2019 season. The team has a history of winning races and championships. Two of its three drivers finished in the championship top ten last year. The other driver was 11th in the championship.
All the pieces are there for Andretti Global to succeed. Can it breakthrough?
The team has failed to put a car in the championship five in the last two seasons and in six of the last ten seasons. In only one of the previous four seasons has the team had multiple drivers win a race, and Andretti Global has not had multiple drivers win multiple races in a single season since 2018. Prior to that, Andretti hasn't had multiple drivers win multiple races since 2013. The team hasn't had three drivers win in a single season since 2011.
It hasn't been for a lack of talent. Colton Herta, Alexander Rossi, Romain Grosjean, Ryan Hunter-Reay and James Hinchcliffe have all driven for the team during that time. Herta is coming off his first winless season in his full-time IndyCar career. Rossi went winless in two of his final three years with the team. Grosjean never won a race over two seasons. Hunter-Reay went winless in his final three years with the organization. Hinchcliffe's second stint at Andretti will be a long-forgotten season.
Despite the team's woes, it has not failed in drawing in top talent. Herta is coming off his worst season, but he still showed plenty of speed and won multiple pole positions. Kyle Kirkwood won multiple races in his first year with the team after many had questions over his ability from Kirkwood's rough rookie season. Entering the fray will be Marcus Ericsson, a driver that has finished sixth in the championship the last three seasons and who has 50 top ten finishes in 80 career starts.
One of these drivers should at least be in the conversation for the championship top five, and the team should be good enough to allow one of them to be sniffing a championship outright. Herta was third in the championship only four seasons ago.
Ericsson has the consistency to bring the team back in the conversation. It must be acknowledged Ericsson's consistency did come with Chip Ganassi Racing. Consistency is something Andretti Global has struggled with. Andretti had only seven top five finishes over the entire 2023 season. There were 12 races where Andretti Global did not put a car in the top five, ten races where it only put one car in the top ten, and there were three races where Andretti Global failed to have a top ten finisher.
However, in qualifying last season, Andretti had four races with multiple top five finishes, multiple top ten starters in ten races and on three occasions the team had three cars starting in the top ten.
Andretti Global must raise its game across the board. Even with its recent dip in results, the drivers that have been there were more than good enough to achieve quality finishes and all of its drivers should have been higher up the order. The 2024 lineup is not a reset, but it is a chance to re-focus. It has two top-tier young drivers that could be the backbone of the team for a decade plus and it has added a proven race winner who rarely steps over the edge.
After a few fledging seasons, the Andretti lineup has a new identity simply from one driver change and one team removed from the grid. This is a group that should be quick and not push over the limit. There will be more eyes and more hands looking over these three cars. Combined with the drivers selected, improvement is the minimum for Andretti Global in 2024. The pieces are there for so much more.
2023 Andretti Autosport Review
Wins: 2 (Long Beach, Nashville)
Poles: 5 (St. Petersburg, Long Beach, Barber, Road America, Mid-Ohio)
Championship Finishes: 10th (Colton Herta), 11th (Kyle Kirkwood), 13th (Romain Grosjean), 22nd (Devlin DeFrancesco)
Colton Herta - #26 Gainbridge Honda
Numbers to Remember:
8.8235: Average starting position last season, sixth best in IndyCar
11.471: Average finishing position last season, tenth best in IndyCar
14.2: Career average finish in 25 oval starts
What does a championship season look like for him?
It starts with Andretti Global remaining strong on the street courses and Herta opening the season with an emphatic victory at St. Petersburg. It is followed with another emphatic street course victory at Long Beach, providing a good cushion before moving to the road courses at Barber and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where he has top five finishes. He has his best Indianapolis 500 to date, running much of the race in the top ten and again finishes in the top five.
This positive start continues with another street course victory, this time at Detroit, he finishes on the podium at Road America and he makes it nine top five finishes from nine races, including four victories with a smashing Laguna Seca triumph. Halfway through the season and the championship already looks determined.
In the second half of the season, with firm control on the points, Herta is hitting good finishes. A top ten at Mid-Ohio. There will be an off day in Iowa, but in one of the races he finishes tenth. He is back on the podium in Toronto before heading into the Olympic break.
Back at Gateway, he finishes ninth, before picking up a fifth victory at Portland. He settles for two top ten finishes in Milwaukee and caps off his season in style with a sixth victory in the Nashville season finale.
What does a realistic season look like for him?
Herta has what it takes to be a champion with multiple race victories. He hasn't been able to put a full season together. He is coming off two bad seasons where he still finished in the top ten of the championship in each. If he has a good season, he will only improve and be pressing for a championship top five finish.
Andretti finds an area to be deficient in speed. For the last few seasons, really pushing the better part of a decade, it has been short ovals. There aren't many of them, but the only big oval on the schedule is Indianapolis, which means if a team wants to maximize points on ovals, it must do well at Iowa, Gateway and Milwaukee.
Herta extracting the most out of the car on road and street courses will lift him up the championship. If he can combine it with strong oval performances, he could sneak through and win the title. In a more likely outcome, he will win two or three times, have spats of sluggish results and wind up making the top five of the championship, but still with many areas to target improvement in 2025.
Kyle Kirkwood - #27 AutoNation Honda
Numbers to Remember:
7.1174: Improvement in average finish from 20.1764 in 2022 to 13.059 in 2023
7.7647: Improvement in average starting position from 19.4117 in 2022 to 11.647 in 2023
50: Percent improvement in races finished (ten to 15) and lead lap finishes (five to ten) from 2022 to 2023
What does a championship season look like for him?
Just like Herta's for the most part. Kicking everyone's teeth in with two victories at St. Petersburg and Long Beach, good runs in the next two road course races, and then his best Indianapolis 500 to date where he spends almost the entire race in the top ten before getting a respectable finish.
After that comes another stellar street course result, a victory in Detroit, good finishes at Road America and Laguna Seca close out June, and a few podium finishes with a victory mixed in over the final four races before the Olympic break setup Kirkwood to be the man to beat entering the final stanza of the season.
Due to the number of oval races and Andretti's oval record, expectations will be against Kirkwood. He will salvage a top ten at Gateway. He will finish in the top five at Portland. Milwaukee will be two grueling top ten results where any joy expressed afterward is from pure survival of the weekend. At Nashville, with everything at stake, Kirkwood sheds any concerns and pulls out a victory to cement his championship.
What does a realistic season look like for him?
Kirkwood should be in the championship top ten. It was a fluky 2023 season in that he could win twice and miss the top ten in the championship. It isn't that those victories were flukes. He handled the competition in those races, but those were his only top five finishes all season. Those are still the only top five finishes in his career. He likely threw away a top five at Toronto last year, and he could have finished in the top five of the Indianapolis 500 had he avoided the spinning car of Felix Rosenqvist.
This could be a year where Kirkwood has more top five finishes, fewer victories and finishes four to five spots better in the championship, and that will be embraced as undisputed improvement. There should be fewer races where he is starting in the top ten and then sliding backward. If he can eliminate those races, or at least only drop from sixth to ninth instead of sixth to 14th or go from third to seventh instead of third to 17th, that will be less of a hit to his championship position.
There is still a world where Kirkwood is the second best Andretti driver when this season is over. He made a big leap from year one to year two. That same kind of jump from year two to year three will be unlikely, but incremental gains are highly probable.
Marcus Ericsson - #28 Bryant/Delaware Life Honda
Numbers to Remember:
0: Stretches of three races or more without a top ten finish since the start of the 2020 season
4.1818: Average of consecutive top ten finishes since the start of the 2020 season
5: Times lead at least double digit laps in a single race in his IndyCar career
What does a championship season look like for him?
Something similar to what we have seen from Ericsson, only slightly better. Instead of opening the season with eight consecutive top ten finishes with three podium finishes, he opens with eight consecutive top ten finishes, but four podium finishes, two of which are victories, one is the Indianapolis 500, and he has six top five finishes in that eight-race span.
Instead of having one top five finish in the final eight races, Ericsson has four or five top five finishes in the final half of the season. He wins another race or two. During this span, Ericsson is the clear leader in the Andretti Global trio, finishing best of the bunch in each race.
Ericsson is getting more out of the car than we have seen at Andretti in recent years. He has strong finishes at Iowa, Gateway and Milwaukee. He is leading the revitalization of the team, and he closes out the season with eight consecutive top ten results, taking the championship with a respectable sixth place finish in Nashville while his other two Andretti teams both make the championship top ten.
What does a realistic season look like for him?
The scary thing about Ericsson is he is coming from being very good at a great team in Chip Ganassi Racing. What will he do at a good team in Andretti Global?
The results Ericsson achieved in four seasons at Ganassi are the bare minimum at that organization. He won regularly enough not to be fire and he finished consistently well where he was always a threat for the championship even if the results weren't quite good enough. Andretti Global has not proved it is good enough in recent seasons for Ericsson to keep that up at this group.
He should still have good days. This concern is will he have them at the same frequency. While he has been a regular race winner, Ericsson has never led more than 51 laps in a season. His most laps led in a race is 37. If that is all he could achieve at Chip Ganassi Racing, how can we expect it to be better at Andretti Global?
We cannot. However, we should not expect Ericsson to fall off the face of the planet. Results will remain good, and he should still finish in the championship top ten. He will likely not finish sixth, but falling to eighth with two podium finishes, five top five finishes and 11 top ten results is still a good season. But, if we think Herta and Kirkwood could have it click and contend for a championship, the same is true for Ericsson.
Ericsson could find himself excelling at a greater rate than even he achieved at Ganassi. Andretti could be the place where he feels more comfortable being a leader, out of the shadow of Scott Dixon and Álex Palou, and it allows Ericsson to thrash the field and wins three or four times a year and pick up personal bests in podium finishes and top five finishes on his way to a title.
The first round of the 2024 NTT IndyCar Series season will be the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on March 10. Coverage will begin at noon on NBC and Peacock.
