Marco Andretti expects to improve in A1GP

Marco Andretti

Marco Andretti's internal clock was wound way too tight when I caught up with the Andretti Green Racing driver in New York late last week. The 21-year-old was combating time zone malaise.

Andretti recently had arrived from competing in the A1GP World Cup of Motorsports event in China and carried an airline ticket (fortunate as a navigation reference if anything) in his pocket for Miami for a few days of R&R. On Nov. 18, it's off to the next round of competition in Malaysia.

Andretti will finish out the A1GP calendar in the Team USA car, which is an in-house Andretti Green Racing production. Blair Pershbacher is the engineer and Dave Popielarz is the chief mechanic.

"We went in pretty cold turkey, so we weren't familiar with the cars at all," said Andretti, who advanced seven positions to finish eighth in the feature in his debut in Chengdu, China. "Obviously we're learning and should be able to take the things we learned in China and make improvements this time out.

"We just need time with it, but on the other hand we need to start showing results. We can't just be driving race cars; we need to be winning races. We need to make something happen."

Team USA is 12th in the standings after two rounds, with Sepang, Malaysia, on the schedule for this weekend. Charlie Kimball drove in the opener (10th in the feature and eighth in the spring race) at Zandvoort, Netherlands.

"It's driving, which is the best training," said Andretti, who finished seventh in the 2008 IndyCar Series championship. "It keeps you fresh and sharp, and that way you don't show up at St. Pete and everything seems fast and you're trying to knock cobwebs off at the first race weekend. It's a lot of seat time and it's a fun car to drive. Ours will be fun when we get it working." Indycar.com