Herta admits '05 MIS win a distant memory.

In what could be the final months of his IRL IndyCar Series career with Andretti-Green Racing, Bryan Herta admits that his 2005 win at Michigan seems like a very distant memory.

Unfortunately for the American veteran, who is one of the candidates to spearhead AGR's new American Le Mans Series programme next year, his #7 Dallara-Honda team believes there is little they can do to improve Herta's fortunes in a largely dismal year so far for the Andretti-Green team.

"It seems like such a long time ago that the XM Satellite Radio team was in victory lane at Michigan," says Herta, who currently sits tenth in the IRL title standings with just one top five finish to his credit in ten starts this year. "Obviously we have our set-up data from last year and we had a great car there, so we're looking forward to the race.

"However, everything has changed and it's going to be a whole new ballgame for everyone. Andretti Green Racing had a very good race in Milwaukee and we got a win for Tony (Kanaan), but there are still three guys on this team who want to win this year and we're going to Michigan in search of our first win."

Last year at the two-mile D-shaped oval Herta led all but 41 of the 200 laps that made up the Firestone Indy 400 but a repeat showing is unlikely this time around, a fact conceded by Herta's race engineer Martin Pare.

"Unfortunately there is not a lot we can take from the XM Satellite Radio car that won last year at Michigan," stated Pare. "We haven't had the success that we had last year on superspeedways but we're still looking for and working toward ways to get some more speed. The test that Tony (Kanaan) completed at MIS last week helped all of our cars and gave us some idea of how things will go this year."