IndyCar driver Marco Andretti made a stop in Virginia last week to promote the upcoming SunTrust Indy Challenge at Richmond International Raceway. The grandson of IndyCar legend Mario Andretti and son of Michael Andretti visited Kings Dominion to do a little racing on a smaller track against lesser competition than he normally faces.

  Andretti was originally scheduled to compete against fans in a round of bumper car action, but instead he opted out to race go-karts. Even though the bumper cars would perhaps better prepare Andretti for the race in Richmond if it comes anywhere close to resembling last season’s event, he said the move to go-karts was a move of self-preservation after suffering a first lap wreck at the Indianapolis 500 a week earlier. “I figured I wanted to save my neck for Texas,” he said.

  Andretti and his friend Chris Lewis got little competition from the amusement part visitors or RIR president Doug Fritz. When the pair took on the pubic, they let them start in front then worked their way up through the pack. Against Fritz, Andretti and Lewis quickly left the track president behind, a feat Andretti hopes to repeat at RIR on June 27.

  And Richmond is one of the tracks that Andretti enjoys the most. “This is a place where I circle on the schedule,” he said. “I think it’s a pretty unique track as far as how short it is. It puts an emphasis on car setup and it really repays you when you get it right.”

  Last year, Andretti came just shy of claiming the pole for the race mainly because he was one of the first to run qualifications. “Last year it was a bummer because I had to go before TK (teammate Tony Kannan) and that put us on the provisional pole,” he said. “The track was just getting better and better and better so it was unfortunate that I just missed the pole last year.”

  But when it came to the race, Andretti also just missed out. Through the crash filled event, he was at the lead for most of the race before faltering down the stretch to finish ninth while Kannan pulled out the win. “That was definitely a race of survival but it was unfortunate because myself and TK, we were the quick.”

  But Andretti is still frustrated about the way the race in Richmond played out. “It was a bad deal,” he said. “It was a strategy deal. We led the whole race then we went off strategy. I don’t know why.

  “There were a bunch of yellows and that’s what really threw me about our strategy,” Andretti said. “They pulled a strategy where we were banking on no more yellows. I was like, ‘Okay, we win if there’s no more yellows but there’s been a yellow every two laps, so why are we going with that.”

  So far this season, Andretti likes the way he and his team have run races but he is not satisfied with how they’ve ended them. “I think we’ve been fairly strong everywhere we’ve gone this year,” he said. “It’s just finishing that stinks, you know. It’s about consistency still. I think that’s the word for me because when we finish we’re there. So we just need to finish.

In the IndyCar Series, Andretti currently sits eighth in points, 58 points out of the lead and has four top-10 finishes.