Marco Andretti has lived in the gym since the 2015 Verizon IndyCar Series came to an end.
The third-generation had a steady run to ninth in the standings with his Honda-powered Andretti Autosport car; a repeat of his finishing position the previous year. Solid, but a far cry from 2013, when he finished fifth on the strength of six podiums and 15 top 10s.
That 2013 season also reflected the fruits of Andretti’s off-season self-improvement efforts. With the help of a driving coach, Andretti broke down some of his bad driving habits, and then rebuilt his approach in key areas which resulted in his best body of work. Heading into 2016, and with his racecraft developed to his satisfaction, the 28-year-old has targeted physical fitness and endurance as one of the primary areas to improve.
“To be honest, we’re not going to reinvent the wheel too much with my driving,” Andretti tells RACER. “Physically, I am in the best shape of my life and I just keep pushing myself every day. We have a lot of time to fill and not a lot of testing, so this is something I can do on my own to get to the next level.”
Teamed with race engineer Nathan O’Rourke on the No. 27 Honda, Andretti is confident the work they produced last year will continue building into better results once the championship gets under way at St. Petersburg on March 13.
“I’m really happy with Nathan and I’s first year together, but we’re also not happy, obviously, because we only had a few podiums,” he says. “We need to win races, especially if you want to win a championship, and I really don’t think Nathan got enough credit for what he did last year.
“Ryan [Hunter-Reay] had a great finish to the season, but up to that point, I had the best average starting and finishing positions in the team, but we didn’t get the wins so it didn’t stand out. That’s what I want to fix this year.”
Andretti was third-best among the Honda drivers in the championship, and the only full-time driver on his team to miss Victory Lane. His last win came at Iowa in 2011, RIGHT, and as he sees it, the only measurable form of improvement that matters this year is in the win column.
“Honestly, I’m coming for wins,” he says. “That is the goal this year. It sounds obvious that everybody wants to win, but honestly, that is the only thing that is escaping me. We were close to wins last year, and the year before, but I want to try to win races outright. I want to win it on track position; I don’t want to win it at a pack race or a strategy-type race. We want to win outright.”
To get there, Andretti has identified qualifying as another area to improve in 2016. He qualified inside the Firestone Fast 12 seven times on road and street courses last year, but never transferred to the final round: the Firestone Fast Six. Barring a bad weekend at his home race in Pocono, Andretti’s oval qualifying performances were also strong, but he knows better results tend to come from better starting positions.
“I was, up until the latter part of the season, the top Honda qualifier, and that was my goal going into last year – to qualify better,” he says. “Which we did, but we were still a little bit off, so it’s something we’re going to work on again. We are hoping to get some help from Honda to close the gap, particularly on the road and street [courses] and short ovals.”
If there’s a driver Andretti hopes to emulate this season, it’s Graham Rahal who, at least in name, has been positioned as a lifelong rival. Rahal, who also races for his father’s team, is another third-generation driver, and like Andretti, found early success in IndyCar before spending considerable time wandering in the wilderness. Rahal’s breakthrough performance in 2015, which added two wins to his tally and produced a fourth-place finish in the championship, is just what Andretti needs. The big question is whether Andretti, O’Rourke, and the entire Andretti Autosport team can make the kind of gains it will take to author a Rahal-like turnaround.
“I think obviously Graham is a hell of a talent,” Andretti says. “But it just takes being the right place at the right time. They were quick. There’s no doubt that his team found something in early testing last year. We know from that standpoint they found something, whether it be in shocks or whatever. They just had the pace that, quite frankly, we never had. They just steamrolled it into a decent season.
“Change a few things for us … if my suspension doesn’t break at Pocono, all of a sudden I’m finishing on his heels with a very average season. I would have been fifth in points. But you can’t sit here and would’ve, could have, should have. It’s not like we were miles off. He and I were the Honda guys for most of the year. But to be up there all year, we definitely need to find something.”
Honda’s struggles added to the challenge Andretti, Rahal, and other championship hopefuls faced in 2015. Initial indicators during recent testing has Andretti feeling optimistic for the new season, but he knows it will take sharing the track with a 2016-spec Chevy to gauge how much progress the Japanese brand’s engine and aero kit has made.
“Testing has gone, actually, too good to be true,” he said. “I think what that does is shows the potential of Honda. If Honda can close that gap, it will be huge for us. A lot of times we found ourselves racing for fifth or sixth, with a darn near perfect day last year when the [Chevy teams] were able to squeeze out some really good results. But obviously, we don’t really know what we have until we see what the competition has. Hopefully, we just pick up where we left off and start going for wins instead of fifths.”
