For the fifth year of the Career Retrospective series it became obvious that a theme was crossroads. A number of drivers were at crossroads, some unexpectedly, at the end of 2025. A few drivers are making clear choices and are heading in different directions. Some are remaining still and are not sure where they will be heading next.
This year, we will look at three drivers as their careers are making a change.
For our third and final part, we meet a driver who is calling it a career, though it has been slowly ending over the last few years. After a half-decade away from full-time driving, enough races have been run to satisfy a career. There are boxes that will remain unchecked, dreams unrealized, and an entry in the history book is finished. The end is new. We are still coming to terms with this change, and it will take some time to reach acceptance.
It is Marco Andretti.
Where was Andretti coming from?
A quick rise up the junior series led to Andretti reaching IndyCar just after his 19th birthday.
After immediate success in car racing, winning eight races in the 2003 Barber Formula Dodge Eastern Championship, Andretti moved to the Skip Barber National Championship in 2004 where he won the championship though he only won one race. He did have nine podium finishes and 11 top five finishes in 14 races, and like Tony Kanaan that season, Andretti never finished worse than eighth.
In 2005, Andretti was full-time in Star Mazda while also dabbling in some Indy Pro Series races. Star Mazda was a little more of a struggle. Though he finished fifth in the championship, Andretti never won a race, and his best finish was second at Sonoma. Raphael Matos took the championship ahead of Robbie Pecorari while James Hinchcliffe and Graham Rahal were directly ahead of Andretti in points.
While Star Mazda was not a smashing success, Andretti was turning heads in his limited Indy Pro Series outings. He won on debut at St. Petersburg, and then he won in his third start on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, as Indy Pro ran the Liberty Challenge in conjunction with the United States Grand Prix weekend at the circuit. In Andretti's final three starts of the season, he was third at Kentucky, won at Sonoma and he was second at Watkins Glen.
Despite starting only six of 14 races, Andretti finished tenth in the 2005 Indy Pro championship
What did IndyCar look like when Andretti started in the series?
When Andretti entered the IndyCar Series, it was a decade after The Split, and neither series was doing all that well.
The Indy Racing League was in a bit of a regression. After having its longest season of 17 races in 2005 and running on road and street courses for the first time, the schedule shrunk to 14 races for Andretti's rookie season in 2006, and this was despite the openness to add road and street courses. Fontana, Phoenix and Pikes Peak all fell off the schedule after 2005.
The grid size also took a dip as 11 of 14 races had fewer than 20 cars start. In the first 11 IRL seasons, only two races had featured fewer than 20 starters.
This was the fourth season of Andretti Green Racing competing in the series after Michael Andretti bought into the Team Green outfit and moved the outfit from CART to the IRL. In its first three seasons, AGR won two championships with Tony Kanaan in 2004 and Dan Wheldon in 2005. Kanaan won the championship while completing every lap in the season, an IndyCar first, and Kanaan never finished worse than eighth. Wheldon won five races, including the Indianapolis 500.
How does IndyCar look now?
We have one IndyCar Series, and we have so since 2008. And it is doing... alright.
Roger Penske owns the series literally after he purchased it in November 2019. Fox Corporation purchased a third of Penske Entertainment this year and now has a stake in the series. Every race is on network television, and attendance is respectable at most events. The Indianapolis 500 has been "sold out" twice. Long Beach is as big as it has ever been. St. Petersburg, Barber Motorsports Park, Detroit, Gateway Road America, Mid-Ohio and Milwaukee have all established rather good draws. There are still other events that not as strong as you would wish.
The schedule has flipped from only three road and street course tracks to 11 out of 16. The ovals come and go. Milwaukee was off the schedule for nearly a decade before a surprisingly strong return in 2024. Nashville Superspeedway returned as a replacement when the Nashville street race crumbled despite IndyCar not racing on the 1.333-mile concrete oval since 2008. Iowa is vanishing in 2026 despite once being one of IndyCar's bright spots during the 2010s, but Phoenix is returning for the first time since 2018.
The grid is now up to 27 full-time entries, and the series has been drawing two-dozen starts for essentially the entire 2020s.
Andretti Green Racing became Andretti Autosport, which has now become Andretti Global as Dan Towriss, CEO of Group 1001, purchased a stake in the team at the end of 2023. Michael Andretti fully sold the team in 2024 to TWG Global, a conglomerate run by global investment company Guggenheim Partners, which also owns the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Lakers and Chelsea F.C. TWG has an entire motorsports division as the company owns stakes in Spire Motorsports in NASCAR, and the group has successful led the creation of the Cadillac Formula 1 Team, which will make its debut in 2026.
In October 2024, Michael Andretti stepped down as CEO of Andretti Global and no longer participates in the day-to-day operation of the team.
What did Andretti do in-between?
Marco Andretti made his IndyCar debut at 19 years and 13 days old, the fourth-youngest driver to start an IndyCar race since 1946 at the time.
Things started slow for Andretti as he finished 15th, 15th and 12th in his first three races. The next event was arguable the most notable event of his career. In his debut Indianapolis 500, Andretti qualified ninth, the second-best Andretti Green starter with Tony Kanaan starting fifth. After a good race where Andretti spent a fair amount of laps in the top ten, cautions and pit strategy had Marco Andretti second as the race restarted with four laps to go while his father Michael directly ahead of him in first in what was Michael Andretti's first Indianapolis 500 start since 2003.
Marco passed his father immediately on the restart and Sam Hornish, Jr. quickly followed into second. Hornish, Jr. was pushing Marco but slipped back as they were about to start the final lap and Marco's lead was about a second at the start of the final lap. However, Hornish was able to remain in the slipstream and pull up to Marco as the two drivers approached turns three and four. Exiting turn four, Hornish had a run of momentum. Andretti defended on the outside coming down the front straightaway, but Hornish made a move to the inside and passed Andretti within the final 500 feet. Hornish won the Indianapolis 500 by 0.0635 seconds over Marco Andretti, the second-closest finish in the event's history at the time. Michael Andretti was third.
A deflating loss, Andretti could be proud he was second as a rookie, but devastated as victory was so close especially as his family had not won the race since his grandfather Mario in 1969.
The rest of his rookie season was respectable. He went on a run of five consecutive top ten finishes over the summer. At Sonoma, Andretti went on an alternate fuel strategy and wound up in the lead while stretching fuel. Thanks to late cautions as well as having teammate support, Andretti held on to become the youngest IndyCar race winner at 19 years, five months and 14 days old. Andretti ended up seventh in the championship.
What followed was a struggle to get back on top of the mountain. While he had a sophomore slump and ended up 11th in the championship in 2007, he still had six top finishes including runner-up finishes at Iowa and Michigan. He nearly won again at Sonoma before contact with teammate Dario Franchitti as the two battled after a pit cycle. In 2008, he had four podium finishes, and he had a great chance at victory at Richmond before a caution caught Andretti out during a pit cycle. These results put Andretti back to seventh in the championship.
In the next three seasons, Andretti ended up eighth in the championship. He had no podium finishes in 2009. He led the most laps at Barber Motorsports Park in 2010, but forced to make an extra pit stop relegated him to fifth at the finish. Andretti did not win again until Iowa 2011, snapping a 77-race winless streak, the second-longest in IndyCar history at the time.
With the introduction of the DW12 chassis, Andretti had his worst season to date. He failed to finish in the top ten in the first eight races, but that was not without a strong running at the Indianapolis 500. Starting fourth, Andretti led a race-high 59 laps, but Chevrolet did not get as good fuel mileage as the Honda teams. Andretti stumbled backward before having an accident with 13 laps remaining in the race. He did finish second at Iowa in a strong night for the Andretti Autosport team, and Andretti ended the season with pole-position at Fontana before finishing eighth.
Off his worst season, Andretti had his best season in 2013. He opened the season with five consecutive top ten finishes, including a fourth in the Indianapolis 500, and he had seven top ten finishes in the first eight races. He won pole position at Milwaukee, but a mechanical issue took him out of that race. He won pole position for IndyCar's return to Pocono, and he led a race-high 88 laps, but Chevrolet's fuel mileage issues bit him again, and struggling to stretch his fuel dropped him down the order and ultimately to a tenth-place finish. Victory eluded Andretti, but he ended up fifth in the championship, his best championship finish.
Victory continued to slip out of his grasp. He was second in the wet at Barber in 2014, and he was third at Indianapolis behind the thrilling battle between Ryan Hunter-Reay and Hélio Castroneves.
At Detroit in 2015, Andretti took advantage of an early pit stop and teams being too conservative as rain approached. While teams proactively took the wet weather tires before the drops began to fall, Andretti ran hard on slicks and not only took the lead, but opened a gap ahead of a number of better cars. However, Andretti was forced to stop for fuel about three laps before he would need wet tires. Carlos Muñoz was able to go those extra few laps and leap-frog ahead of Andretti in the pit cycle. As the thunderstorm rolled in, Muñoz took the victory as the race was red-flagged and stopped. Andretti was caught in second.
Andretti had another strong chance at victory at Fontana, but he ended up third behind Graham Rahal and Tony Kanaan as that hectic race ended under caution after Ryan Briscoe tumbled through the infield grass after contact with Ryan Hunter-Reay.
After 2015, Andretti's results took a dip. Over the next two seasons, he had one top five finish over 33 races. He had only three top ten finishes in the entire 2016 season. Results improved in 2018 as he had eight top ten finishes, including a fourth in the first Belle Isle race from pole position, highlighting a season where he was ninth in the championship.
In the following two seasons, Andretti fell out of the top fifteen of the championship. The 2019 season saw him finish sixth in two races and tenth in three other races as he was 16th in points. His 2020 season had a rough start with four finishes of 19th or worse in the first six races, which made his pole position in the Indianapolis 500 more surprising.
Andretti Autosport was showing great speed throughout practice, and Andretti led the way as Andretti put four are in the top nine qualifiers. It felt like Andretti's moment was coming. Unfortunately, the car did not have the balance in the race, and he immediately fell backward from the start of the race. He spent most of the race outside the top ten and finished 13th. To add insult to injury, Andretti never led a lap despite starting first.
Andretti ended the 2020 season with eighth consecutive finishes outside the top ten. He was 20th in the championship and decided at the end of the season to step away from IndyCar full-time, committing to the Indianapolis 500 from there forward.
Over the last five years, Andretti had finishes of 19th, 22nd, 17th, 25th and 29th at Indianapolis. He started no better than 19th in any of those races.
What impression did Andretti leave on IndyCar?
As an Andretti, Marco was always going to leave an impression on IndyCar. With how his first Indianapolis 500 ended, he will never be forgotten, even more so because he never won the race.
We are going to remember how painfully close Andretti came to cementing his legacy while still a teenager. Winning that one Indianapolis 500 would not have changed Andretti's career that much. While a consistent driver who finished in the top ten of the championship nine times in 15 full seasons, if he had won the 2006 Indianapolis 500, Andretti would likely have an identical career. Maybe he has more confidence and he pulls out another two or three victories. Maybe those two or three victories lead to one or two more championship top five finishes, but for the success that led to the quick rise to IndyCar, Andretti was never on the level of Dario Franchitti, Scott Dixon and Will Power to be a champion.
The last name attracted more criticism than any other driver would have received. Perceived success was always going to be more difficult for him because he couldn't be just good. He had to be Andretti good. He had to live up to a world-class grandfather and a champion father. Those weren't expectations his family had. Those were the expectations of the on-lookers, the attendees who had been watching IndyCar since they were a child and watched three decades of Andretti success thinking the third generation would match the achievements of the previous two.
It is mostly unfair because nine seasons finishing in the championship top ten is viewed as failure in this case while a number of other drivers would wish for such a career, and a number of other drivers would be respected for such results even if the victories were not numerous.
Think about the difference in how people perceive Marco Andretti, a man who only won twice in 253 starts and who only finished in the championship top five once, to Oriol Servià, a man who only won once in 204 starts and who finished in the championship top five twice, one of those coming during Champ Car in the middle of The Split.
The results are not too different and yet the knee-jerk reaction to hearing each name is opposite.
Andretti was expected to be more, a 21st century savior for American open-wheel racing. He was basically a child but expected to carry a name and carry a series. Another successful Andretti was all IndyCar needed to attract viewers. Pair that with a successful Rahal and IndyCar would be back on the top of the mountain in no time. It was pretty naïve to think people would just keep showing up because an Andretti was winning. IndyCar's issues were always deeper than that. Thinking another generation of a known name was all that was needed was at best lazy, and likely led to a lot of hard work not being done to help the series grow.
Marco was always different, an introvert, and the public didn't want that. He was reserved and did not throw himself into the spotlight. If anything, he avoided it when he didn't warrant the attention. When he was running well or was quick, he was willing to participate, but at no point did Andretti make it about himself when things were not going well. He was never a distraction from something greater. He didn't seek to be noticed. A race would end and if the result was nothing special, he would quietly move on. He never pounded the drum to draw a crowd. He could finish eighth and not be the story, and I think he was ok with that.
There will be a large percentage of people who will mock Andretti for the career he had and minimize it to nepotism with the results showing it did not warrant the time and resources provided. I think that is misguided. Let's not act like being Andretti didn't help give Marco the career he had, but for all those who believe he did not deserve this career, Marco Andretti did have the respect of his peers. He was a competitor that drivers trusted track. He was quick and fought for victories against some of the best. We never heard about him being a hazard on the track or being dangerously slow. He might not have been the man to beat year-in and year-out, but he certainly occupied a spot on the grid among plenty of other capable race car drivers who could be competitive on their day.
I think the toughest thing for me to accept is Marco Andretti is 38 years old and it is over. When he debuted at 19 years old, the feeling was he was going to be around forever and he would set a lot of longevity records, especially when you consider how long his grandfather and father drove. Twenty years was the minimum. A 30-year career was plausible. Instead, we got the minimum, and even then we got less than that when you consider he only ran at Indianapolis for the last five years.
I really wished Marco found love and enjoyment away from IndyCar if the results were not going to be there. This retrospective has focused on his IndyCar career, but it neglects Andretti brief time in sports car racing and the time in the Acura LMP2 with Andretti Green. Do people realize he ran an American Le Mans Series race and an IndyCar race on the same day? If Kyle Larson did the equivalent today we would never hear the end of it. Andretti ran at Le Mans, and was a co-driver with a Prost (Nico).
Andretti kind of found a post-IndyCar career in SRX, where he was champion, and he dabbled in stock car racing, but spent most of his time in ARCA, which is not the most competitive division, and he was in a rather underwhelming Truck program running a handful of races. It was never a full attempt at it, but an odd sampling in mid-pack equipment.
Part of me wishes in four or five years, Marco will get the bug to compete again and he can find a happy living in LMP2 racing, whether that is in IMSA or the European Le Mans Series or both, and he can get a chance to go back to Le Mans, and he can have a chance to compete with some of his old buddies as co-drivers. He ran one IMSA race, the 2021 6 Hours of the Glen, in LMP3 with his cousin Jarett and Oliver Askew and they finished fourth in class. I was really hoping that was going to lead to more.
Seeing as how Andretti is viewed, I think my wish is he could find a level where he could have fun and be competitive while achieving some success because he wasn't terrible though plenty will say so. He was better than the record book will say. Not a champion, not one of the best of the last 25 years, but better than the vitriol Marco Andretti gets and will likely never escape.
