Herta thinks Acura had good first year

Andretti Green Racing’s Bryan Herta will be on hand for this week’s SEMA Show, the premier automotive specialty products trade event in the world, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Herta will be at the show representing XM Satellite Radio, the primary sponsor of AGR’s Acura entry in the LMP2 class of the American Le Mans Series.

Bryan Herta

“It’s a place that people use to talk about the season we just had with the Acura and our first season, as well as starting to talk about next year’s expectations," Herta said. “There’s a lot of motorsports media at the show, and there’s always a chance to tie in with them."

Last year’s SEMA show saw the unveiling of the No. 26 Acura entry with XM sponsorship. This year’s event is scheduled for Tuesday through Saturday.

Herta finished seventh in the 2007 P2 championship. He won in class at Sebring with Dario Franchitti and Tony Kanaan, and had two other podium finishes with Marino Franchitti (second at Houston and third at Mosport). It marked Herta’s first full season in the Series since 2002.

“Overall I’m very pleased with the first year," he said. “We want to win and we wanted to win more races. But we made a good show of ourselves. We were pretty competitive in our first season and we gained a lot of knowledge to apply over the winter.

“We achieved all the targets Acura set out at the beginning of the season. We wanted to finish three cars at Sebring, wanted to win a race and win a pole position. Beyond that was to learn the tracks, gain data and knowledge about the cars, and better the chassis and engine."

[Editor's Note: Porsche will not be sitting still over the winter either. It will be interesting to see if Porsche again smokes Acura in 2008 (and the P1 Audis) or whether Acura can up their game enough to close the gap to the German marque.]