Andretti and Myers-Shank have had bad blood boiling all season.
I'll bet it has something to do with Honda brownie points or something. Andretti must feel like they are THE Honda team (and have earned that position), but Shank stole Indianapolis right out from under their noses. Rossi made several references to "Honda teammates," so there has to be something here.
Of course, since Shank was denied entry to the series by not being able to get a Honda or Chevy, I would not blame them for telling everyone to pound sand. Teammates with other teams and a manufacturer who froze us out? Pound sand, losers.
Besides, what else could there be bad blood over? This team has had very few on-track run ins with anyone. Harvey has been a little wild in his defenses, but that's not a team thing. That's a driver on driver issue.
I'm going to give Rossi a pass for running his mouth here. He's had a miserable two or three years, all without a lot of complaining. Perhaps today was just the breaking point and Rossi wasn't going to take any more s*** from anyone. I'm not crazy about the guy, but he's really, really fast and should be winning some races. Maybe Herta stole his mojo.
I did like Helio's interview yesterday. He made it sound like this was the plan all along, and not they are set to go into next year ready to win, which is hard to argue against considering his grid slot today.
Shanks has had an interesting year. Outside of Indy, there's not many results worth talking about. Harvey qualifies really well but rarely delivers on race day. Helio fell flat after Indy, so if you take that out they had a bad year. Still, winning Indy kills a lot of demons.
In IMSA, they could have won a couple except they went with cute alternate strategy. You've only got to beat five cars. Do it on speed instead of praying for a yellow. Don't be cute. Just go flat out and let it all fall wherever it falls.
How Shank will do next year? No telling until we know who the second driver is, and no telling in IMSA until we see the cars run in 2022 BOP trim. Still, you know Helio is gong to be a rocket at Indy, and in IMSA anything can happen.
