Written by Archie O’Reilly
Colton Herta had gone 40 starts winless since his May 2022 victory on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. But finally, on the streets of Toronto in 2024, that drought came to a close and the Andretti Global driver notched his eighth career victory after numerous near-misses, whether through driver errors, team mistakes or pure doses of misfortune.
Herta dominated the weekend from start to finish. He led opening and second practice before winning his 14th career pole position, then going onto sweep race day with the fastest time in warm-up and 81 of 85 laps led en-route to victory.
“I did not lead Round Two of qualifying,” he pointed out. But it was as close to perfection as you could come on any one race weekend as Herta led home an Andretti one-two with teammate Kyle Kirkwood after sweeping the front row in qualifying.
Here is how the drivers reacted to events north of the border…
Herta’s hunger to end his drought
Going winless for a spell of over two years is no doubt a weight for any driver - it is impossible to ignore. But Herta did not want to let it become a burden.
“It’s not frustration,” he said. “It’s eagerness almost. For me it was hunger. I never got down about it. There were times maybe frustration at places I thought I could win and it didn’t happen. But I think over the season, you just get hungrier for it and you want it more. It does make you work harder. I think that’s a good thing. But I’d prefer it if we just won a lot more.”
Herta ultimately knew he had put himself in the position to win on multiple occasions. After taking pole on two prior occasions in 2024 - in Detroit and the for the first Iowa Speedway race - circumstances out of Herta’s control initially sent him down the order. This considered, a diminishment in confidence was never really in play.
“I don’t think I had any self-doubt - in myself, the team or anybody that we’re working with - that we couldn’t win again or anything like that,” Herta said. “But it is difficult to take weekend after weekend. It starts compounding into years. It’s very difficult to be happy about a performance when it’s not a win after that long of a time.”
Relief the overwhelming emotion
“Yes,” was Herta’s answer when asked post-race whether relief was his primary emotion. And that much was very clear even without his clarification.
“It’s disappointing when you have success in a series, then you don’t get it for a long time,” he said. “Two years without a win is very tough on everybody: on the team, on me. We all 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.”
There was scope for Herta’s frequent hits of poor luck. He had five restarts to marshall beyond the race start - two threats to his lead at the start and three inside the closing 20 laps. But strong launches and cooperation from Kirkwood allowed Herta to keep up front.
“I feel like I never get the 85-lap full green races to win,” Herta said. “It’s always like red flags and yellows at the end. But it’s good - it makes you work a lot harder for it, so it feels better when it happens.
“It was a crazy race. I saw a little bit on the screens at some points. I don’t know how great the passing was or whatnot but I felt like you could pass. When I got up to some of the slower cars, got by them super easy. All around it was a fun race.”
It was a popular win through the paddock, fitting of Herta’s standing among drivers. Scott Dixon said it was “deserved” for Herta to have had a smooth weekend and described the win as “nice to see” despite the pair being split by only four points in the championship.
Herta said celebrations would not truly commence for a “few days” into a three-weekend break without races. But after meetings and simulator time, there may be a hint of celebration once he returns home.
“Really I don’t need to celebrate,” he said. “I’m just happy that we finally did it. It reignites me. We have a four-week break coming up and that sucks. Even after three weekends back to back to back, I just want to go race again and have a chance at another win.”
Herta’s long-awaited victory donuts
The release of emotion from Herta after taking the chequered flag was clear for everyone to see as he promptly broke into burnouts and some impressively-executed donuts. His hands even left the steering wheel at one point mid-multi-spin.
“I love doing donuts,” he said. “This engine’s getting ripped out after this race so I could destroy it as much as I want, although Honda won’t like that because they like to rebuild them and keep them in cycle. That one might be destroyed so apologies for that.
“I hate when I don’t get to do donuts. This is the perfect race to win because this engine is coming out. So I got to do them.”
Andretti’s street course pedigree
Andretti took both of their wins last season on street courses through Kirkwood in Long Beach and Nashville. And that speed has continued on into 2024 and the four now-run street course events. Herta took his two poles, with the Toronto weekend about as dominant a team performance as has been seen on a street course in recent times.
“I think it’s a lot of things,” Herta said. “I think typically we have had really good cars. I think Ganassi has brought really good cars to street courses. On the [Honda] engine side, it plays into our hands a lot more on the lower-end stuff. Once we get to the higher-end stuff, we don’t have that competitive edge. On street courses, we do have an edge.
“It flips and changes throughout the season. A lot of things go into it. Long Beach was a fuel race - maybe Honda makes a little bit better fuel.”
All five Andretti-run cars, factoring in the pair of allied Meyer Shank Racing entries, qualified inside the Fast 12 as no Chip Ganassi Racing cars transferred. All bar Marcus Ericsson made it into the Fast Six.
“It’s definitely a team thing,” Herta said. “We bring rocket ships here. It makes it so much easier on us. I think if it was driving style, you would see maybe just me or maybe just Kyle up at the front consistently, or Marcus. We’re all up there. The guys have a really good street course package at pretty much every street course we’ve done this year.”
The cars were “so solid” that Herta felt he did not need to push in the race to win by 10 or 15 seconds. To Kirkwood, the performance was “really, really not a shock” given the confidence-feeding package consistently delivered on street courses.
The value of Kirkwood’s team game
Kirkwood’s delight for teammate Herta in victory lane was telling of the team effort at Andretti.
“I would rather have won - that’s always the thought,” Kirkwood said. “I also wasn’t going to push the envelope whatsoever in that situation. We didn’t have much pressure from behind. The last thing I’m going to do is attack Colton and potentially cause an issue just so I can win. Took it as an Andretti Global win today.”
There were points on late-race restarts where Kirkwood put some more pressure on Herta as opposed to hanging back, especially when Dixon started to become their only real challenger race-long. Kirkwood described the end of the race as “a chess game” after initial pace that made him believe he could have won the race.
“We had a ton of pace,” he said. “I think if we were in front of Colton, we would have sailed off into the sunset. We were super, super fast. I was stuck in his dirty air the entire race. Maybe could have passed him, caught him off guard a couple times. Ultimately it was team first.”
There were no defined team orders but Kirkwood remained wise. Herta suggested he did still have pace in hand but “didn’t feel the need” to risk anything given he was managing for most of the race; he was able to pick up the pace when Kirkwood fell under more pressure.
“There’s no preconceived notions,” Kirkwood said. “Of course, we went into the race saying we need to dominate this race and we need to run up front and we need to not put each other in positions where we might potentially get beat by other people. Ultimately the strategy we were both on was the best one to be on.
“Colton qualified on pole, deserving of the win. I was also very fast - I think we were faster but he was very, very fast himself. I wasn’t going to pressure him to an extent to where it might cause a hiccup for either one of us, not only for him.”
Kirkwood sits seventh in the championship - an improvement on 11th in his first year with the team - and has only twice finished outside the top 10 with five races remaining. His four top-five finishes is double his 2023 tally (albeit both were wins).
Is Dixon’s championship still alive?
Finishing third in Toronto, Dixon added to his two street-course wins - in Long Beach and Detroit - and extended his 2024 podium tally to four. He has now finished inside the top six in nine of 12 races this year and still sits third in the championship, 53 points back from Ganassi teammate Alex Palou.
“Without our tyre issue at Road America [a 21st-place finish] and the hybrid issue at Mid-Ohio [a 27th-place finish], I think we would maybe be leading the championship,” Dixon said. “It’s frustrating but you can’t do anything about those situations. It’s out of your control.
“We’ll keep our heads down. I think this time last year we were 120 points back… we closed it to 60 or 70. Until we’re out of it, we’re never going to give up. They’re a tough team. I see all they do and they do it well.”
Dixon recovered from starting 15th in Toronto after failing to execute in qualifying despite having “a very good car” from opening practice onwards.
“[We] decided to wave a lap off [in qualifying] because of a car coming out of the pits, which I probably didn’t need to,” he said. “That lap would have got us through. Then screwed up my last lap. That was frustrating. I think we should have been a lot further up the grid. The car had a tonne of speed.”
Dixon made meticulous progress through the race. He recalled passing a few cars at the start and “started picking them off” from there. His pace in clean air led to an overcut strategy for both pit stops and Dixon “started overcutting everybody” to make further progress.
“In theory we needed a bit of a longer race,” he joked. “Maybe a 120-lap race would have been great.”
Dixon believes “anything is possible” inside the final five races of the season following the upcoming break for the Olympic Games. It was somewhat frustrating for him that attrition behind the podium places allowed teammate Palou - playing the percentage game very effectively - was able to progress from an 18th-place start up to fourth.
“I think the lucky car out of that one was the No.10 car [of Palou],” Dixon said after the red-flag causing late-race crash. “Everybody kind of just crashed in front of him or got a penalty, which definitely helps. You got to take those days. They did a hell of a job…
“I wouldn’t say it’s good fortune. They do a hell of a job. That’s why he’s won two championships in the last three years. I don’t want to take anything away from that. You create a lot of your own good luck. They do a good job of that.”
Are there title prospects for Herta?
If Dixon is in the title fight ahead of the run-in, then one must argue that Herta - while vastly less experienced in this position than the six-time champion - is at least an outside contender, only four points back from the New Zealander.
“It’s possible,” Herta said of mounting a possible title charge. “In testing we were quite a bit better than Alex [Palou] at Milwaukee. 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 [heading into the final race].
“We’ve had success at Portland - we were on to win there last year until we got a speeding penalty. We’ve had really good cars at Gateway, qualified second there. 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 [Palou] so hopefully that can continue.”
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