Colton Herta arrived at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in an unfamiliar position, holding 11th in the NTT IndyCar Series drivers’ championship.

The Andretti Autosport driver hasn’t come close to the podium since finishing fourth at the season opener in February, coming off of two consecutive races where mistakes have produced his worst start to a new championship run.

In Long Beach he locked the brakes and crashed while running third, and spun while trying to capture seventh at Barber Motorsports Park, but Herta says he isn’t letting the self-induced adversity weigh on his mind.

“I’m not too worried about it at the moment,” Herta told RACER. “The points are still relatively close, but yeah, we just need to start ramping it up.

“We just need to convert the speed that we’ve had into results. But I’m not too worried. I think we have really good cars.”

Asked about the roots of the issues at Long Beach and Barber and whether he’s dealt with the same kind of off-track distractions his former Indy Lights teammate Pato O’Ward acknowledged facing earlier in the season, Herta said there’s no reason to search for deeper reasons behind the adversity.

“Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything there,” he added. “I don’t have an F1 contract. It’s literally only testing. But yeah, a lot of times when you have adversity people tend to look into things and think that it matters more than more than it does.

“It does suck, and it’s definitely been on my mind, but not in a negative way. That it. Nothing’s hindering me going forward.”

Herta rolls off in 14th place with the No.26 Honda for today’s 85-lap Indy Grand Prix, which starts earlier than originally planned at 3:07 p.m. ET.