Colton Herta feels like a podium result this season should have been had by now. He calls it almost embarrassing that it took 10 races for one to finally come. But, it had to come at some point and it did on a day that he started from 14th in.

“Yeah, happy to finally get a podium. It’s been a frustrating year so far with how everything has gone,” Herta said after netting his 25th career top five result. “You know, we’ve had chances before to get on the podium and maybe even win, but haven’t been able to take advantage of them.

“Then a race like this comes around where we really don’t think we have a chance of getting on the podium, and then here we are. So that’s kind of INDYCAR racing for you. It’s a little bit hectic.

“It’s a little embarrassing it took this long. We’ve had good cars all year, and just whatever has happened.

“It’s great to finally get that monkey off our back. Hopefully we can continue this and go right back to having strong performances in qualifying and that just makes you race so much easier when you are able to race at the front, and the results come a lot easier at that point.

“We’ll dial in on that for the next race, and hopefully have two good ones at Iowa.”

You’d think Herta would have had a podium with having two straight poles at Road America and Mid-Ohio. What’s wild is, neither resulted in hardware. One of them only had a top 10.

A bad pit call in Road America took him from the lead to fifth in the end after leading a race-high 33 of 55 laps. In Mid-Ohio, a speeding penalty dropped him from second to finishing 11th.

But, with recent speed and entering a track that he won the pole at last year and finished second in, this was supposed to be Herta’s chance.

Then came Saturday’s rain.

After being quickest in Saturday morning’s practice, Herta’s car didn’t handle right in the rain which forced him being a shock driver eliminated in the opening round of qualifying.

That honestly came down to a decision made between practice and qualifying.

As the quickest driver on the combined speed chart, Herta was able to pick which group that he wanted to be in for qualifying. Most people may not fully understand the qualifying groups, but to take a deeper dive, they’re determined by the overall speed chart for the race weekend.

For this weekend in particular, we had a 75-minute practice session on Friday and a 60-minute practice session on Saturday. They take all the times from both sessions and order them 1-27. With Herta’s lap time on Saturday morning being P1, he had the choice.

So, everyone behind him that was odd on the speed charts (3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, etc) would be in whatever group that Herta chooses. Everyone in 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th and so on would be in the opposite group from Herta.

Between practice and qualifying, Herta chose Group 2. Which most drivers that are quickest do so because you get more grip on the track from the opening 12 minute group putting down rubber on the racing surface.

This time, it came back to bite them.

That’s because Herta’s car was so good in the dry conditions. He was fourth on Friday and first on Saturday. But rain is the great equalizer and sparked a messy second group. Which as a result, cost Herta a chance of shining and advancing on.

“We were definitely a lot better in the day than we were in the wet,” Herta said. “We seemed to just not have the rear end, struggled with wheelspin. I just couldn’t get the lap time down two what the other guys were doing.”

Still, he didn’t give up and after a questionable first stint, that Lap 44 pit call allowed him to get in the near proximity of the catbirds seat again.

He exited pit lane in second. While he had to save to make it until the end, it was a strategy they had to take or else they were teetering on the brink of a top 10 result.

Last year, he pit for the final time on Lap 45 and with the aid of two cautions, stretched his fuel to finish runner-up.

This year, he got a caution instantly when teammate Kyle Kirkwood punted Helio Castroneves. With Kirkwood being penalized for that maneuver and extra yellow flag laps, it helped Herta massively.

He was now the leader on this strategy and all but three cars pit under that caution. Those three cars would still have to pit.

Unfortunately for Herta, he couldn’t hold off Palou coming from behind. Neither could slow down Lundgaard.

Even with Palou’s damaged win ahead, Herta said that his pace wasn’t all that bad and with having to still save fuel, he couldn’t fully catch him to get up one more spot on the rotunda.

“I did know, but honestly the pace he was going wasn’t bad at all, especially for the fuel number that we had to hit compared to a lot of the other guys,” he said.

“So I was kind of happy sitting and seeing what my tires were going to do because, remember, on the first stint of the blacks I dropped like a rock after, like, 25 laps. That was nine laps of yellow also.

“Then we had to do, what, like, 40 on the last stint. We pitted right around 39 or something like that. So I was, like, Oh, man, we’re just going to go back to 15th and have to pit again. So I was fine just sitting there.

“I tried to have some goes at him at the end of the race, but it was tough because I know every time I come out on to the straight and use that push-to-pass, I’m probably going to go up 6%, 7% of fuel mileage, and that’s going to destroy the race.

“Yeah, it’s tough when you are that car in the middle, and you have to try to attack but keep everybody else behind. So my main goal was trying to hold on to the podium, keep everybody behind before I was kind of looking ahead to him.”

Still, a podium is a huge win for Herta on a day that he started in 14th as he now has 12 podiums in 75 races run during his career.