"We hate doing that": Colton Herta breaks down the detrimental factor behind Detroit pole

Andretti Global's Colton Herta secured an impressive pole position at the 2025 Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix on Saturday. After the qualifying sessions, he also shed light on the new set of soft tires that he used in the Fast Six after skipping it in Round 1 of qualifying.

Colton Herta will start tomorrow's race ahead of David Malukas, Kyle Kirkwood, Christian Lundgaard, Graham Rahal, and the reigning IndyCar champion, Alex Palou.

In relation to using a fresh set of soft tires in the Fast Six, Herta added the following via his post-session interview:

"To be honest, we hate doing that. It really takes away a shot at pole. You know, you look at Alex at IMS, on the road course, like such an easy pole position for him because he was the only one on new reds." (0:55 onwards).

Colton Herta is yet to secure a Grand Prix win in the ongoing 2025 IndyCar season. His Andretti Global teammate, Kyle Kirkwood, has managed to amass one and the remaining five have resulted in favor of in-form Alex Palou.

Colton Herta's take on the 2025 Indy 500

While Colton Herta will start the Detroit Grand Prix from the pole position, his last week's outing at the Indy 500 was well below expectations. After starting the 200-lap race from P27, he was only able to end his outing in 14th place in the standings.

Moreover, his Andretti Global teammates, Marcus Ericsson (P2) and Kyle Kirkwood (P6), were sent to the back of the field following post-race inspections.

In line with his outing at Indianapolis, Herta said via Andretti Global's website:

"Tough day for the Gainbridge team. We were working our way through the field and had even made it into the top 10 after the first 50 laps, but we had an issue in the pits and were never able to recover after that. It’s unfortunate, because I think with the strategy we’d worked out and the speed in the Gainbridge Honda we could’ve had a much stronger result today."

Colton Herta produced an extremely strong 2024 season in America's highest class of open-wheel racing. He missed out on the championship by finishing just 31 points behind Alex Palou. In the overall 17-race campaign, Herta was able to put on board two wins, three pole positions, 10 top-fives, and 13 top-10 finishes.

Keeping in view that the Andretti Global driver is currently in ninth place in the 2025 drivers' standings, he has a lot of work to do to finish in the top five at the end of the season. Herta has so far managed to put on board only 120 points with just one top-5 finish in six races.