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In full transparency, I wrote this in our hotel room on Saturday night, and updated it Sunday – after Marco Andretti had survived the Last Row Shootout. Yesterday’s news that Josef Newgarden and Will Power have been moved to the back of the field should probably be the topic here, but I already had this written up and didn’t want it to go to waste. All I can say is, good for Doug Boles for having the guts to drop the hammer on his boss’s team.

To let them off for a very egregious offense, by just remaining on the fourth row and not run for the pole was just not a good look, and would add more fuel to the fire of the conflict of interest appearance. On Sunday, we kept hearing that this is not the last we’ll hear of this. It wasn’t. I’m now wondering if this was twenty years ago and we still had alternate starters, would they be completely disqualified? I said at the time he became President of IndyCar, as well as IMS; that Doug Boles was the right man for the job. This move may be very unpopular with his employer, but it solidifies his place among the fans. Now on to today’s no-longer-timely topic…

If you listened to Trackside last week, you may have heard them discussing the potential of this year being the last year for Marco Andretti to drive. I’ll admit I had never given the topic much thought, and I was caught off guard when Curt Cavin said he would be surprised if Marco came back after this year.

Is this really Marco’s twentieth start? That is so hard to believe and really makes me feel old. The 2006 Indianapolis 500 does not seem so long ago, when Marco came with a couple of hundred feet of being a nineteen year-old Indianapolis 500 winner.

Last week, I wrote about heartbreaks in the Indianapolis 500. I probably should have included Marco Andretti being passed by Sam Hornish just before the yard of bricks. Although Marco ended up winning at Sonoma late in his rookie season – I always wondered how Marco Andretti’s career would have gone, had he won that 2006 race. Instead of being heralded as an Indianapolis 500 champion, he was just a teenager whose inexperience caused him to lose the race.

I also wonder how his career would’ve gone had he driven for a team that didn’t have Andretti in the team name. With that name being synonymous with racing success for decades, was driving for his father more pressure than the young driver should have put on himself?

Graham Rahal chose to drive for Newman/Haas and Chip Ganassi Racing, before joining his famous father’s team. I think it made him a better driver. AJ Foyt IV drove for his famous grandfather. I’m not sure he had a ton of talent, but no one could have escaped the comparisons to his namesake. It was always going to be a losing battle.

Marco has a big fan base, but a lot of it is comprised of nostalgic fans thirsty for a name from their past. I think many were actually fans of Mario and/or Michael, more than they were for Marco.

Marco is very shy and introverted. He probably didn’t do himself any favors with his Titter feed back when it was really getting popular. The old-school Andretti fans thought that the third-generation driver should have focused more on honing his craft, than posting pictures of himself with other celebrities and flaunting his privileged lifestyle.

Five years after his near-win at Indianapolis and his first career win at Sonoma, Marco earned his second and final IndyCar win – this time in a very dominant run at Iowa, in 2011. By that time, most fans had already labeled the career of Marco Andretti to be a bust. The perception was that he was driving for one of the best teams in the paddock, and obviously had the DNA to be a great driver; but he was too focused on his playboy lifestyle than he was his race craft.

Whether or not that was totally fair, that was the perception.

His lack of results through each season notwithstanding, you can’t deny that Marco Andretti had a strong record in the Indianapolis 500 – despite the fact that he never won. Keep in mind, his father and uncles never won the famous race, and his grandfather only won it once.

With nineteen 500s already in the books, Marco has eight Top-Tens. That also includes a second-place finish, three third-place finishes, a fourth and a sixth. He was also the pole-sitter in 2020. The problem is, those eight Top-Tens all took place in the first twelve of those nineteen races. Since 2018, Marco’s finishes have been 12th, 26th, 13th, 19th, 22nd, 17th and 25th. This year, he found himself in the Last Row Shootout, battling to not be the one driver out of four to go home. Fortunately for him, he was the fastest of the four drivers.

After the 2020 season, Marco announced he would limit his IndyCar drives to the Indianapolis 500. In doing so, he has fulfilled the stereotype of a one-off driver – showing up rusty with a crew put together for a once a year appearance. Marco could dazzle in practice and qualifying at IMS, even if the races didn’t go his way. But since he left the series fulltime, he has become an afterthought at IMS. His starting positions beginning in 2021 have been 25th, 23rd, 24th and 19th. Along with this year’s performance, that’s not doing the family legacy any good.

Probably fueling Cavin’s theory that this could be Marco’s final 500 is that Andretti Global is far from the same team he was driving fulltime for just a few years ago. He probably has little to no relationship to his teammates, except for Colton Herta. From what I can tell, a lot of the crew is still the same as it was when he was fulltime, so this may be a nice homecoming for Marco this year. His father is no longer involved, so I’m sure things are every different for him this year. I’m wondering if Marco actually wanted to return with Andretti Global after this year, would the opportunity even be available to him?

Marco is 38 years old, and is now a father. I’ve gotten the impression he hasn’t had a whole lot of fun this May. He may have a contractual situation with the team, but I don’t know that.

While I was surprised when Curt Cavin suggested this might be Marco’s last Indianapolis 500, after thinking about it – I’m inclined to agree with him.

George Phillips.

This entry was posted on May 20, 2025 at 4:04 am and is filed under Indianapolis 500. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.