In qualifying for the Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis, the IndyCar rookie set a fastest time almost 0.4 seconds quicker than next fastest Andretti car, that of Ryan Hunter-Reay. However, that effort still only left him 14th … although he will start 12th, following the penalties to Graham Rahal and Josef Newgarden.

“We’re still lacking an overall technical direction to follow,” Rossi told Motorsport.com. “We’re constantly searching for grip, front and rear.”

The Californian, who came from Formula 1 and also finished runner-up in last year’s GP2 championship, added: “Apart from St. Petersburg where Ryan [Hunter-Reay] and Marco [Andretti] really looked on the pace in the race, we’ve had no consistent good form. And obviously the setup for a street race like St. Pete doesn’t give you much you can transfer to a smooth road course like this.”

Asked if he was at least pleased with his own performance in qualifying, to have established a sizable margin over his teammates, Rossi answered in the negative.

“Nah, that’s not why we’re here,” he replied. “I think Ryan missed his setup but other sessions he can be ahead.

“You know, no one on the team is going to be satisfied until we’re fighting at the front. There are a lot of smart people in the room in our technical debriefs, and look at last year – Andretti bounced back big time in the second half of the season.

“But the gap we have to the best of the Honda cars shows we’re missing something fundamental. And it’s annoying because we have pretty good cars on raceday. We just give ourselves too much work by missing those tenths in qualifying.”