Colton Herta started on pole for the Detroit GP but crossed the finish line in P3 after a tough IndyCar race on the bumpy streets.
Detroit was a chaos filled race, with championship leader Álex Palou having his first DNF of the season. Kyle Kirkwood took his second win of the season and took a bite out of Palou’s lead.
Herta lost out on the win but ended the race with a podium, an important result for the Andretti driver. In the post-race press conference, he admitted the race was far from easy as he lost out to his teammate in the first pit cycle.
“The whole race. Yeah, very difficult track. Very difficult to get everything right today.“
“I think we ended up choosing the right strategy, and I was happy with how we did everything with the tyres. Yeah, our Gainbridge Honda was fast, and yeah, wish we could get two more positions, but maybe in two weeks.
Herta lost the lead into the first corner but made the place back on exit against Lundgaard. However, despite the close battles at the front, Herta and those he was fighting avoided incidents.
The Andretti driver admitted that he was trying to back up the grid, which he hoped would prevent an accident.
“The idea was to pack everybody up as much as I could. I’d like to say it was for the fans, but it was to try to stop that from happening and have to deal with restarts as the leader.
“I figured if everybody is packed up, everyone would be moving slower into Turn 1, and it would be harder to create chaos, and it seemed like it worked.“
A clean Sunday
Herta’s season has been difficult in 2025. Although he’s started all but two races in the top five, he’s only finished inside the top five twice. One of which was Detroit.
He’s specified before that he needed to have a clean weekend without issue to get himself back in the game. Even with a win on the table, he was happy with a P3 result.
“The type of season that we’ve had up until this point, it’s been really hard. It’s sucked, and I think anybody on the Gainbridge car will tell you that, that we haven’t been happy with how everything has been going.
“Yes, I would have loved to win. It does feel bad when you start first and you lose positions. But with how our season has gone, I think we’re happy with the podium, and we just need to keep it rolling.”
Difficult track conditions
Further back in the field there was chaos, and Herta admitted it was a difficult track to drive on alone, let with a full grid of drivers surrounding you.
“I think it’s just brutal with the bumps. It’s just a difficult track to get right, to not hit anything on its own, and then when you add 26 other cars out there, it makes it even more difficult.”
However, despite the bumps, Herta was firmly against the suggestion of repaving the track. He believes the bumps were not the cause for Louis Foster who suffered a suspension failure.
“No repaving. Until we’re bad with bumps, no repaving. To make it worse; take a jackhammer to the place. I don’t think it’s a safety aspect.
“The cars are incredibly strong, so whatever happened to him, I would suspect it was a mileage-out part, or maybe he had contact at some point that weakened it. But it would be awfully strange for it to just fail, especially from the bumps that we have here.”
Championship fight
Although Álex Palou crashed out of the Detroit GP, the championship lead is still 90 points to Pato O’ward in second and 150 points down to Colton Herta in ninth.
Many drivers have remained sceptical around the title chances with Palou taking such a dominant charge. However, weekends where Palou leaves with no points are vital for those drivers further up the order.
Herta saw Detroit as a weekend which would close the gap to Palou marginally even before his crash.
“You have to be able to take the maximum amount of points on that guy, and I think we were going to do it today even if he finished where he was.
“I think we were strong enough to hold him off, and I think we would have kept him behind, so we would have knocked down the points lead a little bit. But I think it helps everybody else out in the championship a lot when he goes out like that. It’s unfortunate for him, but we really need some mistakes from him or misfortune to be able to catch him.”
With the nature of IndyCar, the fight truly isn’t over until it is over. However, Palou is a force to reckon with and no doubt he’ll be back in form on the 15th of June for the next round of the NTT IndyCar serries.
