Schmidt Peterson Motorsports has a new vacancy to fill with general manager Rob Edwards moving to Andretti Autosport, and according to team co-owner Sam Schmidt, he and Ric Peterson will take their time to identify the best replacement.

“First, I want to thank Rob; we wouldn’t be as successful as we’ve been without his organizational skills and contribution to our efforts,” Schmidt told RACER. “At the same time, we have some extremely talented people on our staff, and we’re built to be solid without relying on any one individual – it’s a team effort. I don’t know what the chemistry is like at other teams, but it’s really important for us to not just throw someone into that position.

“I haven’t known about the situation for long, but we aren’t going to overreact. If the right person comes along, or we can promote from within, we’ll make that decision when we’re confident it’s the best decision for the team. You can’t put a timeline there.”

Schmidt and Peterson have filled two vacancies so far during the offseason after driver Simon Pagenaud and engineer Ben Bretzman signed with Team Penske. Edwards’ departure for Andretti makes the third spot to fill in recent months.

“We aren’t going to poach someone from another team; if they’re free and interested, that’s fine, and as I said, we might have someone in the team who can step up, but we aren’t going to go down the same route,” Schmidt explained. “Kudos to Simon and his situation; we knew about where that was headed early enough and were prepared for it. Hinch was free to hire from Andretti, and we’ve promoted from within on the engineering side from, and everyone’s gone to work and pulled up their boots.”

In addition to replacing Edwards, Schmidt has been busy locking in the team’s Indy Lights drivers, Hinchcliffe’s teammate, and the commercial support to complete SPM’s funding for 2015.

“I’ve got a lot of other things to do as well like getting all of our programs finished and the commercial side taken care of; replacing Rob is just one of the items on the list,” Schmidt added. “We have four Indy Lights cars, four drivers, and announcements are coming soon on all of that in the next week.

“The second Indy car – we haven’t been able to figure out how to do it without some assistance, so that has some drivers waiting to see what’s going to happen for them. We have strong engineering, a strong pit crew, and we have to get it done. That’s a big priority for us and we hope to have some movement soon.”​