It is their (the management company's) job to be looking into all of the options for my future and making sure they are right. They certainly did have contact with different teams in different series. That's just part of business, though, ... I'm working on a deal with Andretti Green right now. I'm working on getting something that is fair for both sides. At the same time, if somebody approaches you, you can't just tell them no. You're going to listen to what they say. For me, the most important thing is to be happy and win races.
Quotes about andretti (11 Quotes)
We came into this race shooting for a top five finish in the points, and we had a great day and accomplished that. The guys gave me some great pit stops today like they have all year. That has been a real strength for us. Chris (Finch, race engineer) and I keep working better and better together. I think we maximized everything we had on our car. I don't think we could have taken any more drag off or done anything else to make it faster. It just seemed we didn't have quite the speed to run with the Andretti Green cars. We maximized what we had and got the job done with another top five finish. It was a really great year for the entire team. These guys just don't stop. My hat's off to J.D. (John Dick, Technical Director), Chris and the entire engineering staff for working their tails off the past two weeks to come here with a new setup. This is the best we have run on a big track. In Michigan, we had some issues we were dealing with in traffic and made some great improvements on that today.
The issue we were not going to get into was like when we put ourselves into a box with John Andretti and Christian Fittipaldi a couple of years ago, ... We wanted to keep three teams but we didn't have a sponsor. We went out and hired a driver but we couldn't find a sponsor for the team ... but had to pay a driver for a couple of years that we didn't have a car for. We're not going to put ourselves in that position again.
Marco Andretti is not a strange guy we have to get used to, to make it work between the four of us.
I remember the first time I met Andretti I think we were on the same flight. It was probably three years ago and I think I went up and got his autograph and introduced myself.
If you look at Andretti Green, perhaps ourselves over the last several years, I think having more than two cars is an advantage.
I'll definitely be in the IndyCar Series, but Michael Andretti has got to keep paying me some more, ... I think we're getting pretty close. It's just stuff between lawyers right now.
Last year, and I'm praising Honda here at the expense of Andretti Green Racing, we perhaps didn't work as hard on the car as we perhaps needed to, because we had the traction control. Now, everybody's got the same, so you've got to make sure your car is very good.
This is the first race track we ever went to, and we never missed a race growing up. So to have the chance to race there, as brothers sharing the same car, is really just an amazing opportunity for us. I'll never forget the battles we saw here growing up with Unser and Andretti and now we have the opportunity to add our names to the history of this track. Hopefully we will be able to do that this weekend.
Then I was just trying to make my way back up. I got Andretti going into three. I got a good run on him and just passed him. Then I caught Pablo and snuck by him on the backstraightaway.
It's pretty obvious that Andretti Green Racing is a real switched-on program. Having four drivers is that much more information they can all share. Testing is so limited in the IRL ... anytime you can learn from three different drivers, it's an advantage.