Alexander Rossi has faced doubters and critics his whole career, but he struck back in response to the most recent round of skepticism with an excellent Ed Carpenter Racing debut.
Rossi felt he deserved another chance in Formula 1 after his part-season with Manor but failed to secure a full-time seat for 2016. So instead he switched to IndyCar and promptly won the biggest race in the world at the first time of asking, taking Indianapolis 500 glory.
Then, strong form in 2018 and 2019 led to him being linked to a Team Penske move, probably one of the biggest honours for a driver in terms of teams being interested in you.
He stuck with Andretti but the emergence of Colton Herta within the team coincided with the introduction of the aeroscreen for 2020, which changed the car’s characteristics.
Ultimately, Rossi chose to switch to McLaren for 2023 where he couldn't rekindle his race-winning form.
Now at Ed Carpenter Racing - he has been good friends with the eponymous team owner for a long time - Rossi turned an admittedly lowly 20th place in qualifying in St Petersburg earlier this month into a 10th-place finish in what was a tricky race.
Part of the immediate at-home feel for Rossi has been the car itself. Coming from a McLaren team that has naturally shaped itself around Pato O'Ward's style, that hasn't always been easy for the likes of Felix Rosenqvist - who has been better since joining Meyer Shank for 2024 - and Rossi.
Whether that's fair on McLaren's car and O'Ward is a different matter, but it's clear Rosenqvist and Rossi are strong IndyCar drivers capable of better results than they mostly managed at their previous team.
"This car feels so...it brings me back a couple years, it's so much more familiar to me than anything that I had at McLaren," Rossi tells The Race.
"That gives me a lot of, happiness, I guess is the right word.
"Because the underlying fundamental elements of the car are very, very good. When you break it down to the simple stuff, is it good on the brakes? Yes. Is it good in straightline traction events? Yes. Is it good in high-speed [corners]? Yes.
"So all of those elements kind of already exist in the car, you're just working on managing grip consistency, over bumps and pavement changes and that sort of thing. And I think that's the area where we're lacking more than anything else.
"But the overall platform of the car is really, really good.
"So St Pete, even though I think our overall pace was lacking, I left there being kind of relieved with some of the foundational elements of the car, because it's not going to take really any huge adaptation on my side, from the driving style standpoint, it's plug and play from that standpoint.
"So that's pretty awesome."
What's more, street circuits are where ECR would be expected to struggle the most in 2025.
After businessman Ted Gelov invested in the team last year, it went on a hiring spree to address arguably one of its weaknesses from previous years of not being as well-staffed as some of its rivals. And while the fruit of that is likely still to come, a top 10 in the first race is a welcome sign.
"We're realistic in terms of knowing where our strengths and weaknesses are going to be as we start this journey," says Rossi. "And I think street courses are certainly not something that we're currently super confident about.
"There's some big improvements in the pipeline, but we don't really have a handle on how to apply those quite yet. And so I think St Pete was just trying to understand some of the...IndyCar is not like F1, but it is a little bit in terms of off-season development, in the areas where you can develop.
"So, when we talk about upgrades, you're obviously talking about the damper programme and stuff, and so there were new hires in the off-season, there's a lot of good stuff that we have, but like anything in life you don't just take all these new cool bits, put them on the car and - instant success.
"You have to adapt the set-up to kind of make the best use of these new tools and toys and stuff that you have. And it's not always as easy as plug and play. So I think there was some good stuff that came out of St Pete.
"To come out of St Pete with a top 10, and recovering from not being on the preferred strategy, was an overall good day.
"The team was fantastic in pitlane, there was no errors in terms of, nothing went wrong throughout the weekend. We made some good improvements on Sunday, and we executed the best we could and came away with a semi-decent result.
"So I think everyone was happy with that."
ECR was a race winner as recently as 2021 with Rinus VeeKay - in that race where he stopped Romain Grosjean from a first fairytale victory at the Indianapolis road course - and the Indy 500 is where the team really comes to the fore.
This is all to make the point that the St Petersburg and Long Beach street circuits are the outliers in what should be a strong start to the year for this team, continuing at Thermal this weekend.
“I think that we're optimistic about certain tracks more than others, and the front part of the schedule is fairly friendly to us, especially when you think about the 500," says Rossi. "It's just weekend, to weekend.
"I think the team had a very good test, the rookie test at Thermal. They were very strong with Hunter [McElrea]. We did a very good test at Barber [pictured above].
"So two out of the next three weekends, I think we're pretty optimistic about."
Perhaps we'll learn the most about Rossi and the team in the second half of the season, then - when the going is likely to get tough in places.
But those doubters ready to write off Rossi, after what is acceptably deemed a step down from the teams he's raced at previously, should hold off on their condemnation after what was a really impressive St Pete opener.
And Rossi's comments about what he expects the ECR development team to bring with more time, the investment, plus how quickly he's adapted to this car, you'd be silly to rule out Rossi and ECR from fighting for a top 10 in the championship.
When Andretti, Ganassi, McLaren and Penske account for 12 cars alone, it's really tough to breakthrough.
