How Colton Herta's dad became Kyle Kirkwood's race strategist at Andretti Global

Colton Herta made his IndyCar debut in 2018 with Harding Racing and joined Andretti Global in 2021. Colton’s father, Bryan, had already been working with Andretti and became the race strategist for his son. However, just a couple of years later, Colton's father became Kyle Kirkwood's race strategist. Let's have a detailed look at how it happened.

Bryan became Colton's race strategist in 2021 and worked with his son until the first race of the 2023 season. During their time together, Colton won four races with his father as his strategist. However, after just one race into the 2023 season, Andretti Global announced that Kyle Kirkwood and Colton Herta would be swapping engineers.

IndyCar drivers haven't done so well with their fathers as their race strategist in the past. Michael-Marco Andretti and Bobby-Graham Rahal are examples of the same. However, that wasn't the case with Bryan and Colton Herta.

But the 2022 season was a step down in performance for Colton, who in 2020 and 2021 had finished third and fifth in the championship, respectively, but only managed 10th in 2022.

2023 Grand Prix Of Long Beach - Acura Grand Prix Media Luncheon - Source: Getty

The first race of 2023 didn't go well for either Colton Herta or Kyle Kirkwood, and therefore, the decision to swap race strategists was announced. The decision was even more surprising because Kirkwood and his strategist, Scott Harner, worked together during Kyle’s debut season at AFR.

When asked about why the change happened, Colton Herta said (via AP):

“I don’t know why they changed it, but do I think a needed change would have changed the result of the race? No, It was a team decision, that’s all I’m going to say.”

Kyle Kirkwood also reacted to the change as he said (via AP):

“I don't know what it is with the family deal, I don’t know if they want to separate that, but they just said this was best for the team and they think it’s going to be really good for me, and they feel Colton is ready for Scott.”

Colton Herta's father, Bryan, hailed Kyle Kirkwood after the Detroit GP victory

Kyle Kirkwood remains the only driver to have won a race in the 2025 season apart from championship leader Alex Palou. After Kirkwood won the 2025 Detroit GP, his race strategist and Colton's father, Bryan Herta, came out and hailed the #27 Andretti Global driver. Speaking about it, he said (via Racer):

“Kyle's been great. He's having a really strong season. He's had great results on a number of different types of tracks. I think we saw a lot of that starting to manifest in second half of last year. The (oval) pole at Nashville, and some things where he was showing a lot of excellence in areas that we hadn't seen from him yet. I think that's just a great indication of his continued growth and improvement.”

Kirkwood went on to win the recent IndyCar race at the World Wide Technology Raceway and grabbed his third first-place trophy of the year.