Colton Herta reveals how his 'inexperience' luckily made him IndyCar's youngest race winner

Former Andretti Global driver Colton Herta announced his move to F2 last month and featured on the Sticker Send It podcast with Tom Gaymore and Jack Harvey. The American won his first-ever IndyCar race in 2019 and became the youngest race winner in the American open wheel racing series. He discussed this win in the podcast, revealing how his inexperience made him the youngest IndyCar winner.

Colton Herta joined Harding Steinbrenner Racing as a full-time driver ahead of the 2019 IndyCar season for his rookie season in the American open wheel racing series. The second race of the season took place at the Circuit of the Americas.

Herta qualified P4 for the race at COTA and was up into P3 on the opening lap. He battled Will Power and Alexander Rossi for three-fourths of the race and was always in contention for a race win. However, it was not the outright pace, but luck with the caution, which gave the American his first win in the series.

Colton Herta came out on the Sticker Send It podcast and detailed how his inexperience with the Firestone tires helped him win the race, as he said,

“The thing that actually helped us win was a little bit of my inexperience. I wasn't able to make my tires last so we kept having to pit early. That's how we got Rossi in the first stop, we undercut him. With that, I was just running my tires off the cliff.” “We pit nearly and then Felix Rosenqvist comes together with somebody, goes into the wall right in front of the pitlane. So yellow came out with a closed pitlane and I had already pitted. So, it was lucky. I think we were definitely going to finish third but to get the win was a bit lucky. We had the pace and we put ourselves in that position to kind of be able to do that.”

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Felix Rosenqvist’s crash and Will Power's mechanical issue helped Colton Herta win his first IndyCar race

Colton Herta was running in P4 after making his final stop when Felix Rosenqvist crashed on Lap 44 on the pitlane entry. As a result, the grid bunched up, and put Alexander Rossi and Will Power at a disadvantage since they hadn't made their final stop.

After Alexander Rossi made his final stop, he was sent outside the Top 10, whereas when Will Power pitted to make his final stop, his car stalled in the pit lane. The Team Penske car was running, but the Australian was not able to put it in gear and drive out of the pit lane.

For the final 10 laps, Colton Herta in the lead and Josef Newgarden in P2 battled for the race win, but the rookie was able to create a gap and won his first-ever IndyCar race. Herta was just 18 years and 11 months old when he won his first IndyCar race, and that record stands to date.

Edited by Pranay Bhagi