Andretti team still hopeful despite bad Friday at Long Beach

Although Carlos Munoz was 10^th fastest, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Marco Andretti and Alexander Rossi ended the day in 17^th, 18^th and 20^th.

But Bryan Herta, who runs Rossi's #98 car in partnership with Michael Andretti, said the problems were fixable.

He told Motorsport.com: “In our case with Alex, we crashed in the first session and so fell a little bit behind, just in terms of getting all our planned changes done.

“And then in the second session, as a group we went in the wrong direction, technically. A lot of the setup needs at places like this are about mechanical grip so we’ve done a few geometry changes that we’ll have to look at again now.”

“But that’s one of the nice things about being part of a big team with a lot of data. There’s a lot more opportunity to get it right the next day. Plus Carlos was 10^th and only two-tenths out of being in the top four! That’s how incredibly close it is.”

Herta also said that the performance of their Honda-powered rivals – in particular James Hinchcliffe’s Schmidt Peterson Motorsports entry and the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing entry of Graham Rahal – gave cause for hope.

“Seeing them right up there proves it’s possible,” said Herta. “Now we just have to get up front ourselves. And so I think three of our crews need to use the lessons learned on the #26 car [Munoz’s] and then take it a little step further.

“The annoying thing is, that’s what everyone’s doing tonight, and starting from a higher baseline.”