Let’s make one thing clear before we start, Romain Grosjean doesn’t need a win to prove anything about himself or his maiden IndyCar season. Both are and have been excellent.
But the highlights have come at Indianapolis. He’s called the place a home away from home this year, training in its gym and riding his bike around the famous 2.5-mile oval while pausing between road trips in his RV he calls Raoul.
The Indy road course was also the home of his first pole in IndyCar, three races into this season.
Now, this weekend, the series returns to the same track, so what does that mean for Grosjean and his chances?
Well, before we address that, the following round is the Gateway oval and then after that there’s a three-race west-coast swing at new tracks for Grosjean. As he proved at Indianapolis with his pole, you can’t count him out at new venues, but it still makes this weekend his most likely place for success in 2021.
In the Indy race earlier this year, Grosjean fell foul of traffic and was undercut by the rapid Rinus VeeKay for victory. It’s hard to apportion any blame to Grosjean.
Perhaps if the Dale Coyne team had pitted Grosjean earlier then he would have avoided the traffic that held him up later in the race, but strategy in IndyCar is bliss with hindsight. If a caution came out after VeeKay had pitted but before Grosjean did, that would have taken VeeKay out of the equation.
Ultimately Grosjean and Coyne come into this weekend more familiar with each other, while Grosjean enters as a more experienced IndyCar driver. He’s become fantastic on the brakes since that Indianapolis weekend, improved on his restarts and in and out laps and the team appears to be more consistent with his pitstops too. Everything is pointing towards another strong weekend.
If there’s any cause for concern, it’s probably that last year there was a lot of deviation between the first Indianapolis road course race of the year in July and the second round – a double-header – in October. It’s a similar time split this year even though the races will be in May and August respectively.
It’s important to point out that 2020 stats are a bit of a rabbit warren in the sense that the addition of the aeroscreen and the massive impact it had on car handling meant with double-headers teams could jump up the order quite erratically when coming to a second race of the weekend or year.
That’s because if you’ve had a full race weekend at a track where you struggled, by the end of it you’re more likely to have improved and enter the next race at that venue closer to the pace.
In terms of qualifying, the two Indianapolis weekends varied in format, too. So the first weekend was a usual ‘two groups, top six advance, then top 12 advances, then the Fast Six pole shootout’. The second event was a double-header so it was decided merely on two groups, fastest from either group is on pole and then the driver from the next session slots alongside.
In terms of lap time, only two drivers who made the top six in the first Indianapolis race repeated the feat of setting a time in the top six at the double-header. Colton Herta did it in all three, while Will Power managed it in two although he was in a curtailed qualifying in the first of the double-headers where times were affected.
That being said, the race results were slightly more favourable. Four drivers scored top 10s in all three Indianapolis races. So that’s a good sign for Grosjean.
It is worth remembering that Alex Palou managed to qualify fourth for the second race in the double-header in October last year for Coyne in the car Grosjean now drives as well. It didn’t translate to a brilliant result, but the pace later in the year was there.
This year’s ‘summer’ race is two months earlier than the double-header was last year, with October making that a cool one compared to what we should see this weekend.
With teams now having (hopefully) mastered the impact of the aeroscreen, I expect to see less variation in terms of pace between drivers in the first race and second race of the year at Indy.
There will be just as much motivation on the Coyne side to win as the Grosjean side, as rumours persist that Grosjean could leave the team next year, even though he hasn’t ruled out staying.
A win might be what’s needed to persuade Grosjean he can make a run at a championship with Coyne next year, as the 2022 title is his ultimate target if he commits to a full season.
