LEXINGTON, OH — Andretti Autosport has made another move in pit road. Earlier this season, Bryan Herta was moved from Colton Herta’s pit box and shuffled over to Kyle Kirkwood. The move was made after the season opener.
It immediately paid off. Just two races in, Kirkwood not only won his first career pole on the streets of Long Beach, a day later he won his first NTT INDYCAR SERIES race as well.
Now, more changes have come forth.
Rob Edwards confirmed to IndyCar Radio during Friday’s practice session at Mid-Ohio that starting with Sunday’s Honda Indy 200 (1:30 p.m. ET, USA, INDYCAR Radio Network) that he will now be moved over to Herta’s pit box serving as third race strategist of the season on the 26 car.
Previously, Herta had his dad for St. Pete and then Scott Harner in Texas, Long Beach, Barber, both races at Indy, Detroit and Road America. However, after a pit call blunder at the end of the last race at Road America for which Herta was called down pit road one lap too soon, he went for a likely win or at the very least likely podium, to finishing fifth.
“I mean we did have many races where we had very fast cars last year, but we tended to do something wrong, shoot ourselves in the foot one way or another,” said team owner Michael Andretti said back in March after a pole in St. Pete. “That’s another thing we’ve really studied and worked on. Hopefully our pit stops will be better and strategies will be better.
“We really worked on trying to be a lot more detail-oriented, things like that.
“I hope it pays off.”
So far, it’s not. Hence another change.
As a result, Edwards moves from Devlin DeFrancesco’s car to Herta’s. Harner will go from Herta’s pit box to DeFrancesco’s. Then, Edwards confirmed that Michael Andretti will be on Romain Grosjean’s pit box from this point forward too.
