Colton Herta snapped a career-long 40-race winless streak in the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto on July 21. The win could signify a championship push for the Andretti Global driver, who believes he can still challenge for the 2024 NTT INDYCAR SERIES championship.
“It's disappointing when you have success in a series, then you don't get it for a long time,” Herta said. “So, two years without a win is very tough on everybody: on the team, on me, on the guys. We all kind of demand the most out of ourselves, and we demand the most out of each other.
“For whatever reason, it just hasn't gone our way. We've had speed. We've had plenty of podiums. We've had a lot of poles, top-fives, but no wins. It feels great to finally get one back.”
Herta climbed from sixth in points entering the Toronto race weekend to fourth, chopping 22 points off his deficit to championship leader Alex Palou, entering the Olympic break 57 points behind.
With five races remaining in the season, Herta has the impression that taking the checkered flag first gives the entire No. 26 Gainbridge Honda team the jolt of energy to challenge Palou to the wire.
“It’s possible,” he said. “There's a lot of tracks that we've had success at in the past coming up. I have never put my head down and said the championship is over at any point just because you never know in INDYCAR.
“It will take a little bit of help. He might need to have a few heartbreaks here and there. But we've been gaining points on him, so hopefully that can continue.”
Palou has committed rare mistakes for three consecutive race weekends. In the July 7 race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Palou made an error getting his car in gear on his final pit stop, dropping him from a win to a second-place finish. In the opening race July 13 of the Hy-Vee INDYCAR Race Weekend at Iowa, Palou had a similar issue on pit road, dropping him from third to just inside the top 20. Palou then crashed while pushing hard to make up lost ground, leaving him in 23rd with his first DNF in over two years. He rebounded to finish second a day later at Iowa. In qualifying for the race in Toronto, he impeded the lap of O’Ward and lost his two fastest laps, dropping him to 18th in the starting lineup.
With four oval races in the final five events of the season and Palou being winless in 23 oval starts on circle tracks, Herta is confident he can apply pressure to Palou while the door for more mistakes remains open with the pressure to deliver mounting.
At World Wide Technology Raceway, the site of the next race Saturday, Aug. 17, Herta has five top-11 finishes in six starts. Herta’s best race was in 2021 when he led over 100 laps before a driveshaft failed while leading, relegating him to an 18th-place finish. He finished sixth last year and finished 11th and fifth, respectively, at Iowa Speedway on July 13-14, the only other short oval the series visited this season.
That 11th-place effort could have been better. Herta earned NTT P1 Award honors for the race, his first on an oval, and led the initial 86 laps before his first pit stop. Later, Herta’s car picked up a tire vibration, costing him second place. He was on pit road for a new set of Firestone Firehawk racing tires when Palou crashed, forcing him to restart at the end of the lead lap.
On Herta’s charge forward, he made it to 11th.
Then it’s off to Portland International Raceway where Palou won a season ago. But Herta ponders if it should have been him celebrating, instead.
“We've had success at Portland,” he said. “We were onto basically a win there last year until we got a speeding penalty.”
The final three races are new to both drivers. The NTT INDYCAR SERIES hasn’t visited Milwaukee Mile since 2015 and Nashville Superspeedway since 2008.
“In testing we were quite a bit better than Alex (Palou),” Herta said of the Milwaukee test. “That's not to say that they're not going to find more speed when we go back. That's a big points weekend. That's basically double points with two races there.”
Andretti Global has won five NTT INDYCAR SERIES championships, with the last occurring in 2012 with Ryan Hunter-Reay. Herta hopes he can join Tony Kanaan (2004), Dan Wheldon (2005), Dario Franchitti (2007) and Hunter-Reay as champions with the organization.