INDIANAPOLIS — Romain Grosjean was always known as a “fast driver” even if his race cars were slow. It was his aggressive racing style and his fearless attitude that made the native of Geneva, Switzerland, a fan favorite in Formula 1 and in the NTT IndyCar Series.
That “fan favorite” label is often a contradiction to how his fellow competitors feel about Grosjean. During the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, his first race since replacing Ryan Hunter-Reay in the famed No. 28 DHL Honda at Andretti Autosport, there were times he drove like a Scud missile.
Grosjean was fast but had several incidents, including rear-ending Takuma Sato during practice.
Despite Grosjean’s penchant for calamity at St. Pete, he is finally in a car fast enough to showcase his speed as a race car driver. He started fourth and finished fourth at St. Pete. The combination of the former Formula 1 driver and Andretti Autosport has all the ingredients to visit victory lane this season.
“The opportunity is there,” Grosjean said. “It’s great. It’s bad but it’s been more than 11 years since I’ve won a single-seater race. I’m sure with Andretti we have a great package and a great team. I was walking the factory the other day with all of the photos of Ryan Hunter-Reay winning with the DHL colors. There is definitely a huge legacy and I hope I can carry on his past.
“Winning is what we want to do. The team is there. My engineer is there. The pit crew is also working very hard. Last year was fun. I proved some good races. I just have to keep the same recipe and go racing.”
Without seeing Grosjean compete, it would be easy to look at his statistics and wonder, “Why do people think he’s so good?”
In a Formula 1 career that began in 2009 and ended with his near-fatal, fiery crash at the start of the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix, Grosjean was winless in 179 starts. He drove for Renault in 2009, Lotus from 2012 to ’15 and Haas F1 from ’16 to ’20.
Despite severe burns to his hands suffered in the crash that could have killed him in Bahrain at the end of the 2020 season, Grosjean moved to the NTT IndyCar Series for the 2021 campaign. In just his third start with Dale Coyne Racing with RWR, he won the pole and finished second in the GMR Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. He scored another runner-up finish in the return visit to the IMS road course in August.
Team owner Michael Andretti saw enough potential in Grosjean that he hired him and released Hunter-Reay, who won the 2012 IndyCar Series title and 2014 Indianapolis 500.
But the question remains: How can Grosjean be considered one of the world’s best drivers without having won a race?
“That’s the hard part about Formula 1,” Grosjean explained. “You can win everything on your way to Formula 1 — Formula 3, Formula Renault, Formula 2. And then you get to Formula 1 and if you don’t have the car, there is no way you can win the race. I was close a few times. I never got lucky on those days where I could win the race.
“Formula 1, if you don’t have the car, there is nothing you can do. In IndyCar, everybody has the same car. There are a few things you can modify. The car is pretty much the same for everyone and that makes it super exciting.”
Dale Coyne and Rick Ware gave Grosjean the opportunity to compete in IndyCar. He is now at one of the one of the top-level teams in the series at Andretti Autosport.
“It’s very similar from when I came from Formula 1,” Grosjean said. “From Lotus/Renault, which was a big team to Haas, which was a small team. Then I came to IndyCar to Dale Coyne, which was 23 people on the team to Andretti with 150 people there. But it feels the same. The relationship with the guys, the mechanics, my engineer are the same.
“I did this for myself. I take the positive of it and I have enjoyed it.”
With Andretti Autosport, Grosjean is a teammate to drivers Colton Herta, 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner Alexander Rossi and Canadian rookie Devlin DeFrancesco.
If Grosjean can successfully get his Andretti missile under control, he is more than capable of winning a race. But it’s been so long ago, will he remember how to celebrate a win?
“It’s been 11 years since I’ve won a race,” he said. “It will be about (bleeping) time. Some of my teammates weren’t even racing.
“The last time I won a race. Colton Herta was 10.”