Marco debut earlier than planned

Andretti announced yesterday that he had signed his son to his Andretti Green Racing team for the full 2006 season to replace the Ganassi-bound Wheldon.

Having rejected running a fifth car for Marco when Michael thought Wheldon was going to stay with the team, Michael had planned to keep Marco racing in the Infiniti Pro Series. However, when Wheldon left, he fast-tracked his son up the IRL ranks.

"Marco was impressing us race in and race out in the IPS," Michael said. "So we started to think, you know, as a team, that maybe we should try to get him a test in one of the IndyCars and see how he does.

"We were able to get him in the car in Michigan the day after the race. He went out and did a fantastic job for the team. He was right on the pace right away, had great feedback. The team was impressed with him. At that point we thought, all right, let's explore the possibility of seeing if we can maybe do a fifth car. At that point we felt like we were going to keep everything intact the way it was.

"We took about two months to do a little research to see if we felt like the team could handle it with the infrastructure we had, everything like that, to run five cars for a full season. The report came back, and we felt like, no, we really can't handle it, that it was going to be too much of a strain on the team as a whole and it might not be good for the team. At that point, we thought we've got to figure out a different direction for Marco to try to get him more experience and hopefully move him into the bigger cars in '07.

"All this time we were negotiating with Dan (Wheldon). We thought all along that he was going to be with us. Then we got word in Fontana that he decided he wants to go and try something different. At that point, it obviously opened it back up to we need another driver. We made ourselves a short list of drivers. Marco was obviously on it."