Andretti Autosport’s Colton Herta in the No.26 Gainbridge Honda and Romain Grosjean in the No.28 DHL Honda had a solid NTT IndyCar Series season-opening Firestone Grand Prix presented by RP Funding on the streets of St Petersburg as Herta finished fourth and Grosjean was fifth respectively.
Speaking following the action, Colton Herta said:
“The Gainbridge car was very good. We had a clean race which is how you want to start off the year. We were running fifth but got (Rinus) VeeKay there at the end to finish fourth. I am happy about how today’s race went. Even with struggling with some problems that prevented us from going up the order a little more. Overall, I am pretty happy how today went and how the performance of the our Honda was today.”
Romain Grosjean commented saying:
“The first race of the season is done and we came away with a double top five – fourth for Colton (Herta) and fifth for myself. We lacked a bit of something today but we are going to work hard to come back next race. The next street course is Long Beach so we should be good there. I am looking forward to going testing in Texas now.”
Alexander Rossi in the No.27 NAPA AutoNation Honda finished the race in 20th place and speaking following the action he said:
“Nothing really went our way. I think the car was pretty good. Our pace was good when we had clean air. I think we had an aggressive strategy. It could have worked but we had an issue in pitlane where we couldn’t get a tire off. That hurt us, but ultimately a disappointing day. We’ll put this all behind us and move on.”
Devlin DeFrancesco finished his first IndyCar Series race in 22nd place and speaking following the action the Canadian said:
“First INDYCAR race in the books here at St. Pete. The speed seemed to be quite mega. I think the three-stop strategy hurt us a little in the end and getting past the lap traffic. With learning we were catching up to Rossi in the end there. The whole No. 29 crew did a very good job. We have some work to do on pit stops on my end, we lost a bit of time there. I have to thank PowerTap, Jones Soda, Wesana, Fyllo, Damon Motorcycles, Kimoa and Simply Mac. Just everybody that made this happen. Super happy with how everything went.”
Ben's News Round-Up 