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coimbrabertone · 2 months ago

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The Full Story of the Andretti Indycar Team

On September 27th, 2024, Jay Penske's sportico.com website reported that Michael Andretti was relinquishing ownership of Andretti Global and stepping back into a strategic role.

Michael Andretti, who spent over twenty years racing in Indycar in his own right and spent just as long as a team owner, was stepping away from team ownership, handing the reins to investor Dan Towriss.

Now, a lot of people have speculated as to why:

Some people say that Michael and Dan had a falling out earlier this season and Michael ultimately left.

Others say that Michael promised Dan an entry into Formula One, and now that the teams have firmly blocked that, Dan demanded some kind of return on his investment.

Others yet think that Michael stepping away is a way to smooth over the friction between Michael and the F1 team bosses, potentially giving an avenue for the Towriss-led Andretti Cadillac to make it into F1 after all.

There is also, you know, the possibility that Michael Andretti was being entirely truthful. He simply wants to step back to a more strategic role rather than dealing with team ownership.

We don't know the real answer though.

Nor is it the topic of this blog.

Instead, this blog is a retrospective on Andretti as a race team, particularly in Indycar. How they started, how the Andrettis got involved, some of the high points, and what the team means to Indycar now that, in one way or another, it won't even been the same.

The story starts in 1993, when Barry Green (a senior Australian engineer who worked with teams like Forsythe and Kraco) and Gerry Forsythe himself (who had run an Indycar team in the early and mid 80s) partnered with Player's cigarettes out of Canada to create a Formula Atlantic team, with Quebecois drivers Claude Bourbonnais and Jacques Villeneuve.

Claude finished second in the standings that year, Jacques just behind in third.

With a promising debut, the team moved up to CART in 1994, fielding Jacques Villeneuve in a Player's sponsored car. Jacques would finish second at Indy and take his debut win at Road America, to finish sixth in the standings and snatch rookie of the year.

Come 1995, the team experienced an ownership split. Barry Green kept Players and Villeneuve initially, while Gerry Forsythe started his own team with Teo Fabi - who had previously driven for Forsythe in 1983 - as the driver.

That didn't stop Team Green from continuing to be successful.

Villeneuve won the season opening Grand Prix of Miami, the Indianapolis 500, Road America yet again, and Cleveland to win the championship.

All of this was enough for Frank Williams to snatch Villeneuve out of Indycar and bring him over to Formula One.

Furthermore, Forsythe secured the Player's sponsorship for his own team for 1996, hiring Greg Moore to drive.

Meanwhile, Team Green had a pair of mediocre seasons in 1996 and 1997, with Raul Boesel and Parker Johnstone, respectively, however, by 1998, the team was ready to compete.

Barry's brother Kim joined in as co-manager of the team, KOOL cigarettes signed up as sponsor for 1997, and they switched to Honda engines that same year.

Then for 1998, they brought on Penske's Paul Tracy and Hogan's Dario Franchitti as drivers. Paul and Dario in those white, green, and gold KOOL cars would be defining drivers in those golden era of CART.

Dario struck first, winning Road America, Vancouver, and Houston in 1998, finishing third in the standings.

Come 1999, and Dario won Toronto, Detroit, and Surfers Paradise, whilst Paul Tracy won at Milwaukee and Houston. Dario finished second to Juan Pablo Montoya on countback, whilst Paul Tracy finished third.

This was Team Green's finest hour.

Paul Tracy won at Long Beach, Road America, and Vancouver in 2000 to finish fifth, but Dario struggled, and more than that, the two gained a reputation for crashing into each other. They crashed into each other at Houstin in 1998 (which Dario won), Gateway in 1999, Chicago in 2000...they were quite literally doing it once a year.

That wasn't the end of it either, since it happened again in Denver in 2002.

Anyway, also in 2001, Michael Andretti enters the story.

Now, Michael had worked with Barry Green at Kraco, but after that, Michael joined his father at Newman/Haas. From 1989 to 1992, Mario and Michael were teammates, and when Mario retired at the end of the 1994 season, it paved the way for Michael to return to Newman/Haas through the end of the 2000 season.

However, Michael wanted to race in the Indianapolis 500, and Newman/Haas was a CART diehard team. Thus, in 2001, Michael partnered with Motorola, Kevin Savoree, and Kim Green to create a satellite entry in the form of Team Motorola.

Michael won Toronto in 2001 and Long Beach in 2002 with Team Motorola, while also finishing 3rd and 7th, respectively, at Indianapolis in those years.

For 2002, Paul Tracy and Dario joined him, in 7Eleven sponsored cars - really a business-to-business (B2B) deal between KOOL and 7Eleven, effectively saying "come buy your cigarettes here!" - and Paul Tracy was pulling off a pass for the lead on Helio Castroneves as the caution came out.

Helio was deemed to have been ahead as Paul complained on the radio, saying that it was the IRL trying to cheat a CART driver out of the win, but the race finished under caution and Castroneves won his second consecutive Indy 500.

For 2003, Michael bought out Barry, with Kim Green and Kevin Savoree initially staying on as smaller partners.

Thus, Team KOOL Green became Andretti Green Racing, and they moved over to the IRL Indycar Series.

Dario Franchitti remained in the #27 car, picking up the Motorola sponsorship, while the 7Eleven sponsorship led to the other two cars becoming the #7 and the #11. The #7 would be driven by Michael Andretti through the end of the Indianapolis 500, while the #11 would be taken over by Tony Kanaan - Paul Tracy had refused to move over to the IRL, so he signed for Forsythe in CART instead.

Dan Wheldon, in a Jim Beam sponsored #26 car, would effectively replace the retiring Michael Andretti after the Indy 500.

In 2004, with the team adding on Bryan Herta in a fourth car - the XM Satellite Radio sponsored #7 - Andretti Green Racing would become the Indycar superteam. They had more cars than anybody else, their Honda engines were better than the Toyota and Chevrolet engines the competition were running, and the likes of Wheldon, Kanaan, and Franchitti would go on a tear.

Tony Kanaan would win the 2004 championship, Dan Wheldon finished second.

Dan Wheldon won the 2005 championship, Tony Kanaan finished second.

Also in 2005, the team achieved two massive milestones.

First, they swept the top four positions at the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. The race in Florida was the first IRL event on a road or street circuit rather than an oval, and Andretti dominated it.

Dan Wheldon first, Tony Kanaan second, Dario Franchitti third, and Bryan Herta fourth.

Second, they won their first Indianapolis 500, capping off a career year for Dan Wheldon.

With Wheldon going to Ganassi for 2006, while Chevy and Toyota pulled out - meaning Penske and Ganassi now had those same Honda engines that Andretti was so successful with - marked a bit of a stumble for the team.

Nevertheless, with Marco Andretti replacing Wheldon in the #26, Michael returned for the Indianapolis, the father-son duo finishing second and third, narrowly losing out to Penske's Sam Hornish.

Still, Tony Kanaan won at Milwaukee and Marco won at Sonoma.

2007 marked a return to form, with Dario Franchitti winning at Indianapolis, Iowa, Richmond, and Chicagoland to take his first championship. Five wins for Tony Kanaan ensured he finished third in the standings as well.

Also, Danica Patrick took over the #7 car, putting a woman in top machinery in Indycar for the first time. She'd finish seventh that year, behind Dario and Tony, but ahead of eleventh placed Marco.

In 2008, Tony would win at Richmond to finish third in the standings again, however, the biggest story around Andretti Green Racing that year was Danica Patrick winning at Motegi. Now, a lot of people diminish this win, saying that half the Indycar world was in Long Beach for the the final Champ Car race.

However, those people don't seem to say that for all the wins that Tony, Dario, and Dan Wheldon got for that team.

Furthermore, at this point, the IRL had won the war. Scott Dixon, Helio Castroneves, all the Andretti guys...sure it wasn't a peak field, but neither was Champ Car at this point. There is a reason that the two series had no choice but to merge.

In any case, the team was on a bit of a decline as well, with the team going winless in a 2009 season where Danica beat out TK by seven points to be Andretti's top driver that season, finishing fifth.

Ryan Hunter-Reay would join the team in 2010 - now rebranded from Andretti Green Racing to Andretti Autosport - and lead them back towards the front of the field, eventually winning the championship in 2012 and the Indianapolis 500 in 2014.

Meanwhile, James Hinchcliffe won at St. Pete, Sao Paulo, and Iowa in 2013 to give the team that one-two punch again.

2015 was another struggle, only winning a single win - Detroit Race 1 with Carlos Munoz - but the team bounced back in 2016, with Alexander Rossi winning the Indianapolis 500 in the Andretti/Herta #98.

Takuma Sato in the #26 would give the team back-to-back Indianapolis 500 victories with his win in 2017, the first ever for a Japanese driver.

Then in 2018, wins at Long Beach, Mid-Ohio, and Pocono, Alexander Rossi would finish second in the championship.

Wins at Long Beach and Road America in 2019 would give Rossi another title challenge, finishing third this time.

Rossi - and Andretti proper - would go winless in 2020, but the affiliated Harding-Steinbrenner car of Colton Herta won the second race at Mid-Ohio.

On top of wins at COTA and Laguna Seca in 2019 before Harding-Steinbrenner joined up with Andretti, this marked Colton's ascendancy at the team his dad once drove for. He would finish third in the standings in 2020.

He won St. Pete, Laguna Seca, and Long Beach in 2021 but regressed to fifth, whilst Rossi, Hunter-Reay, and the returning Hinchcliffe all went winless.

A win for Herta at the first IMS Road Course race and a win for Rossi at the second marked a somewhat better 2022, but with Penske and Ganassi continuing their dominance of the series, while Arrow McLaren emerged as best of the rest, it marked a serious decline for Andretti. Especially once Rossi left Andretti to join an expanding Arrow McLaren team.

To add insult to injury, Rossi in ninth was Andretti's best car in 2022.

This got even worse in 2023, when Rossi's replacement, Kyle Kirkwood won at Long Beach and Nashville, but he was eleventh, and Colton Herta was tenth.

This was bad.

The team was making a lot of noise about trying to get into Formula One, and it even rebranded to Andretti Global as part of those efforts, but how were they going to build their own car for Formula One when they weren't even doing well in a spec series like Indycar?

More bad news for 2024 as DHL left the #28 car - most recently driven by Romain Grosjean - to sponsor Alex Palou for 2024. Andretti Global went from four car super team in 2005 to mid table in 2024 - they needed to consolidate resources if they wanted to get back to the front.

So they did.

Colton Herta in the #26 and Kyle Kirkwood in the #27 remained, but the #28 was taken over by Marcus Ericsson, while the #29 of Devlin DeFrancesco went away entirely. The four-car team was down to a comparatively sleek three, and they hoped to consolidate resources.

Well, wins at Toronto and Nashville Superspeedway ensured Colton Herta finished second in the standings, while Kyle Kirkwood was seventh, and Marcus Ericsson was fifteenth.

The team bounced back somewhat, and things looked good in the offseason.

Sure, Andretti seemed no closer to joining Formula One than they had before, but they consolidated resources to improve in Indycar, while getting ready to move into their fancy new headquarters in Fishers, Indiana.

There was some grumblings that two teams held out on signing Indycar's charter agreement all the way up until the final moment, but it wasn't exactly clear who the holdouts were.

Then Michael Andretti announced he was stepping back at Andretti Global. That...was interesting. That could mean he was the hold out, or maybe not.

It could mean that Towriss seized control of the team, or maybe not.

It could be a ploy to win over the Formula One teams, or maybe not.

It's unclear what will happen to Andretti Global going forward, but this is the story of what has happened to Andretti thus far.

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