Sam Schmidt confirms interest in Colton Herta, McLaren - MotorSportsTalk

STEAM CORNERS, Ohio – Sam Schmidt has confirmed to NBC Sports.com that he has interest in 19-year-old driver Colton Herta joining his Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports team in the NTT IndyCar Series.

Schmidt also revealed he has spoken to Zak Brown of McLaren about joining forces for a full-time IndyCar Series team in the future, but he would have to become a Chevrolet team for that to happen.

Now that Alexander Rossi has made his decision to stay with Andretti Autosport for at least the next three seasons, plus an option year, the focus shifts to Herta, who is in his first season with Harding Steinbrenner Racing.

“We are very interested in Colton Herta,” Schmidt told NBCSports.com. “He is a very talented, young driver.

“I’ve heard that they (Harding Steinbrenner Racing) have an option as well as Michael Andretti. Now that the Alexander Rossi contract has been announced, who knows where that goes.

“Right now, we have another year on James Hinchcliffe’s contract. Marcus Ericsson has said numerous times he wants to come back to our team. Right now, we are vetting that out fully to see where that stands for now, because we aren’t running more than two cars next year.

“Right now, from what I’ve heard they have options on Colton and Mike Harding is going to do everything he can to keep him in the seat. There is lots of speculation there.”

The interest in Herta is increasing because Harding Steinbrenner Racing is underfunded. Team president Brian Barnhart told NBCSports.com at Iowa that the team needs to find either an additional sponsor or an additional team owner to invest in the Honda-powered team.

Team owner Michael Andretti is also involved because he owns part of Herta’s contract and uses Harding Steinbrenner Racing as a partnership team in IndyCar. That team has an engineering alliance with Andretti Technologies, and many of Herta’s crewmembers came from Andretti Autosport.

“I have some control of Colton’s contract,” Andretti told NBCSports.com. “It’s complicated, put it that way. If it stays in the family, I have control. If things fall apart, then everybody loses control. The goal is to keep it all going somehow. Unfortunately, the sponsorship they had is not coming through, and that is putting a lot of pressure on Mike Harding.

“We’re trying to help them. I consider them friends – the Hardings and the Steinbrenners. We have to figure out how to help our friends, and that is what we are trying to do to keep him in our family.

“Obviously, we want to figure out how to keep him in our family. We want Colton to remain in our family. I was really happy we were able to do what we did. The goal is to keep it going. We’ve been watching and focusing on it to see if we can help. We will continue to work with Mike and the Steinbrenner’s to figure out what we can do in the future.”

Team Penske president Tim Cindric told NBCSports.com that Alexander Rossi’s agent and father, Pieter, had approached the team earlier this season to see if it had interest in the 27-year-old driver.

“We told him to reconnect with us after May,” Cindric told NBCSports.com. “When we told them, it would be in a fourth car, they weren’t interested in being part of four cars.”

But does Team Penske have an interest in signing Herta?

“We’re not running four cars,” Cindric said. “That’s the end of that discussion.”

Andretti believes there are many teams in the IndyCar paddock that have interest in youngest driver ever to win an NTT IndyCar Series race when he won at Circuit of the Americas on March 24.

“You have a lot of others interested in him like Sam Schmidt and Ed Carpenter,” Andretti said. “I’ve even heard a few F1 teams are interested in him. There is a lot of interest because the kid is really good. That is great.

“But it’s our job to keep him in the family.”

Schmidt’s team was also interested in Rossi but realized if the money he had to offer was close to what Andretti could spend, he would stay with Andretti.

“Any driver that has a great situation with his engineer and his team, if they could get close on the money, I’m sure he would have rather stayed there than upset the apple cart,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt also spoke about McLaren’s interest in partnering with his team, which would once again be complicated because Arrow Schmidt Peterson is a Honda team, and Honda Japan does not want to do any future business with McLaren after an acrimonious split with McLaren F1 in 2017.

“Again, we have another year on our contract with Honda,” Schmidt said. “The company has stated perfectly clear they can’t be associated with (McLaren CEO) Zak Brown or McLaren, so I think that alienates us from that program.”

Andretti was offered a lucrative proposal by Brown to have McLaren join forces with Andretti Autosport and was about to switch from Honda to Chevrolet. But first-year Honda Performance Development president Ted Klaus convinced Andretti to stay with Honda, which in turn allowed Andretti to re-sign Rossi.

Honda plans on making Rossi its lead test driver when IndyCar goes to the 2.4-liter engine formula in 2021.

“We had to look at all of that, including McLaren,” Andretti said. “It’s going to suck if I see McLaren out there with another team because we worked so hard to make that happen. Zak and I are really close and wanted to make it work. We are partners in Australia. It will be really awkward if he makes it work somewhere else.

“I think a lot still has to happen for McLaren to come over, but they are not quitters. What happened at Indianapolis in May is going to make them more determined than ever. That is their mentality.

“Unfortunately, it won’t happen with us because they can’t work together with Honda. That means they would have to come in with a Chevy team.”

Young Herta has done a tremendous job isolating himself from the rumors and speculation and getting on with his rookie season in the NTT IndyCar Series. He is currently 14th in the standings with four races remaining this season. He is coming off an eighth-place finish in last Sunday’s Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio.

“It’s always nice that there are people interested in me,” Herta told NBCSports.com “If something bad happens, there is potential for somebody else to give me a ride, which is nice. But I’m pretty happy where I’m at, at the moment.

“As long as you have a good car, you don’t think about that. I’ve had a good car most of the time.

“It gives confidence, not only for the actual race team but the marketing and PR department. All these other teams are fully funded, and we are running up front with them. Thanks to NBC, we have gotten great exposure at all of the races. PT (Paul Tracy) and Townsend Bell and Leigh Diffey and the broadcast group have done a tremendous job covering us. They have told me firsthand about that and that’s nice.

“Mike Harding and George Michael Steinbrenner, IV both made an investment in the team early on, so it didn’t really affect us. Luckily, we had Capstone Turbine jump on board as a co-primary and then as a primary the past two weekends is nice. Hopefully, they can keep going with us.”

INDIANAPOLIS – Alex Palou had not turned a wheel wrong the entire Month of May at the Indy 500 until Rinus VeeKay turned a wheel into the Chip Ganassi Racing pole-sitter leaving pit road on Lap 94.

“There is nothing I could have done there,” Palou told NBC Sports. “It’s OK, when it is my fault or the team’s fault because everybody makes mistakes. But when there is nothing, you could have done differently there, it feels bad and feels bad for the team.”

Marcus Ericsson was a master at utilizing the “Tail of the Dragon” move that breaks the draft of the car behind him in the closing laps to win last year’s Indianapolis 500. On Sunday, however, the last of three red flags in the final 16 laps of the race had the popular driver from Sweden breathing fire after Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden beat him at his own game on the final lap to win the Indianapolis 500.

Despite the two disappointments, team owner Chip Ganassi was seen on pit road fist-bumping a member on his four-car team in this year’s Indianapolis 500 after his drivers finished second, fourth, sixth and seventh in the tightly contested race.

Those are pretty good results, but at the Indianapolis 500, there is just one winner and 32 losers.

“There is only one winner, but it was a hell of a show,” three-time Indianapolis 500 winner and Chip Ganassi Racing consultant Dario Franchitti told NBC Sports. “Alex was very fast, and he got absolutely caught out in somebody else’s wreck. There was nothing he could have done, but he and the 10 car, great recovery.

“Great recovery by all four cars because at half distance, we were not looking very good.”

After 92 laps, the first caution flew for Sting Ray Robb of Dale Coyne Racing hitting the Turn 1 wall.

During pit stops on Lap 94, Palou had left his stall when the second-place car driven by VeeKay ran into him, putting Palou’s Honda into the wall. The car sustained a damaged front wing, but the Chip Ganassi crew was able to get him back in the race on the lead lap but in 28^th position.

Palou ultimately would fight his way to a fourth-place finish in a race the popular Spaniard could have won. His displeasure with VeeKay, whom he sarcastically called “a legend” on his team radio after the incident, was evident.

“The benefit of being on pole is you can drive straight and avoid crashes, and he was able to crash us on the side on pit lane, which is pretty tough to do, but he managed it,” Palou told NBC Sports. “Hopefully next year we are not beside him. Hopefully, next year we have a little better luck.”

Palou started on the pole and led 36 laps, just three fewer than race leader Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren Racing.

“We started really well, was managing the fuel as we wanted, our car was pretty good,” Palou said. “Our car wasn’t great, we dropped to P4 or P5, but we still had some good stuff.

“On the pit stop, the 21 (VeeKay) managed to clip us. Nothing we could have done there. It was not my team’s fault or my fault.

“We had to drop to the end. I’m happy we made it back to P4. We needed 50 more laps to make it happen, but it could have been a lot worse after that contact.

“I learned a lot, running up front at the beginning and in mid-pack and then the back. I learned a lot.

“It feels amazing when you win it and not so good when things go wrong. We were a bit lucky with so many restarts at the end to make it back to P4 so I’m happy with that.”

Palou said the front wing had to be changed and the toe-in was a bit off, but he still had a fast car.

In fact, his Honda was the best car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway all month. His pole-winning four lap average speed of 234.217 miles per hour around the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway was a record for this fabled race.

Palou looked good throughout the race, before he had to scratch and claw and race his way back to the top-five after he restarted 28^th.

In the Indianapolis 500, however, the best car doesn’t always win.

“It’s two years in a row that we were leading the race at the beginning and had to drop to last,” Palou said. “Maybe next year, we will start in the middle of the field and go on to win the race.

“I know he didn’t do it on purpose. It’s better to let that pass someday.”

Palou said the wild racing at the end was because the downforce package used in Sunday’s race means the drivers have to be aggressive. The front two cars can battle for the victory, but cars back in fourth or fifth place can’t help determine the outcome of the race.

That is when the “Tail of the Dragon” comes into the play.

Franchitti helped celebrate Ericsson’s win in 2022 with his “Tail of the Dragon” zigzag move – something he never had to do in any of his three Indianapolis 500 victories because they all finished under caution.

In 2023, however, IndyCar Race Control wants to make every attempt to finish the race under green, without going past the scheduled distance like NASCAR’s overtime rule.

Instead of extra laps, they stop the race with a red flag, to create a potential green-flag finish condition.

“You do what you have to do to win within the rules, and it’s within the rules, so you do it,” Franchitti said. “The race is 200 laps and there is a balance.

“Marcus did a great job on that restart and so did Josef. It was just the timing of who was where and that was it.

“If you knew it was going to go red, you would have hung back on the lap before.

“Brilliant job by the whole Ganassi organization because it wasn’t looking very good at half-distance.

“Full marks to Josef Newgarden and Team Penske.”

Franchitti is highly impressed by how well Ericsson works with CGR engineer Brad Goldberg and how close this combination came to winning the Indianapolis 500 two-years-in-a-row.

It would have been the first back-to-back Indy 500 winner since Helio Castroneves in 2001 and 2002.

“Oh, he’s a badass,” Franchitti said Ericsson. “He proved it last year. He is so calm all day. What more do you need? As a driver, he’s fast and so calm.”

Ericsson is typically in good spirits and jovial.

He was stern and direct on pit road after the race.

“I did everything right, I did an awesome restart, caught Josef off-guard and pulled away,” Ericsson said on pit lane. “It’s hard to pull away a full lap and he got me back.

“I’m mostly disappointed with the way he ended. I don’t think it was fair and safe to do that restart straight out of the pits on cold tires for everyone.

“To me, it was not a good way to end that race.

“Congrats to Josef. He didn’t do anything wrong. He is a worthy champion, but it shouldn’t have ended like that.”

Palou also didn’t understand the last restart, which was a one-start showdown.

“I know that we want to finish under green,” Palou said. “Maybe the last restart I did, I didn’t understand. It didn’t benefit the CGR team.

“I’m not very supportive of the last one, but anyway.”

Dixon called the red flags “a bit sketchy.”

“The red flags have become a theme to the end of the race, but sometimes they can catch you out,” Dixon said. “I know Marcus is frustrated with it.

“All we ask for is consistency. I think they will do better next time.

“It’s a tough race. People will do anything they can to win it and with how these reds fall, you have to be in the right place at the right time. The problem is when they throw a Red or don’t throw a Red dictates how the race will end.

“It’s a bloody hard race to win. Congrats to Josef Newgarden and to Team Penske.”

Follow Bruce Martin on Twitter at @BruceMartin_500