Andretti Autosport basks in total team effort

A surprising state of achievement was realized on Sunday with Takuma Sato's remarkable Indy 500 win. As the Japanese driver basked in the glory he'd rightfully earned, his Andretti Autosport team also took a moment to reflect how truly competitive the program had become in such a short period.

It was Sato who drove into Victory Lane, but it just as easily could have been Ryan Hunter-Reay, Alexander Rossi or Fernando Alonso. At certain points in the 200-lap contest, Andretti cars ran 1-2-3 as the Honda-powered team demonstrated its might.

The expansive collective, pushed by veteran Andretti president JF Thormann, rebuilt under the watchful eye of COO Rob Edwards, and reshaped on the engineering front by technical director Eric Bretzman, has taken back-to-back Indy 500 wins, with the most recent coming while an internal revolution was in progress.

"I think the good thing coming from last year's race is we saw some things that could be improved," Edwards told RACER. "A lot of that started with getting Eric Bretzman on board as technical director who could lift the entire program up across all cars. That was the goal in the last 12 months, and I think yesterdays showed we've achieved that. It's about putting people in the right places."

From Edwards' perspective, seeing the unified strength of the Andretti unit on display Sunday was immensely satisfying.

"It's a long race, a lot of things happen, so the best thing to have is a bunch of cars there that are capable of winning," he said. "Ryan was quick, Alexander was quick, Fernando was quick, and any of them could have won, and Takuma was also there with them, running strong, and was in a position to win. It's true teamwork. And overnight, we've already done lists on how we're going to improve to better again next year."

Andretti drivers led 95 laps – nearly half – during the 101st Indy 500. Beyond cars and engines and all of the technical aspects to consider, Edwards says the bond formed between the Alonso, Marco Andretti, Jack Harvey, Hunter-Reay, Rossi and Sato teams is what truly made the difference.

"It's all about building a team philosophy, which is difficult in such an individual sport," he said. "But it's a team sport, all the people in the pits working together. I think the biggest story of the whole month, which we couldn't show, was the group meetings in the engineering office. All the drivers, all the engineers, coming together every night, every morning, to talk about what they'd learned, what they planned to do, and sharing everything equally.

"Drivers were asking each other questions; I think Fernando was the catalyst for that as someone new coming in. Because all six drivers were working all day, we were there throughout the race and there when it counted in the end."