It was like watching Romain Grosjean’s season and IndyCar career in a microcosm as Christian Rasmussen smashed into the rear of his car in Sunday’s Portland race.
Like in F1, Grosjean’s peaks put him at an elite level, but some of his lows are enough to undo a tonne of hard work for himself and his teams.
At Portland, he was running sixth, having set the fastest lap of the race the tour before, when he spun at Turn 1. He just took too much kerb on the inside, a mistake which you see often in practice but is a result-crusher in a race - and something the other drivers managed to avoid on Sunday.
MAJOR YIKES MOMENT FOR ROMAIN GROSJEAN. 😳
— INDYCAR on NBC (@IndyCaronNBC) August 25, 2024
📺 : USA Network and Peacock | #INDYCAR pic.twitter.com/VjZq1PXuIY
He eventually got going but then drove straight onto the racing line where Rasmussen couldn’t avoid him and crashed into him. This earned Grosjean a penalty for "unsportsmanlike/unsafe behaviour".
It was a weekend that summed up both why many teams would want Grosjean in their car and why some then think twice about it.
Ultimately, the Juncos Hollinger car currently has no right being eighth in qualifying in such a stacked field. Grosjean’s put it in the top 10 five times in 14 races this year, including in all of the last three races. It only did that as a team twice in 2023 and three times in the season before, when its cars had better one-lap pace.
In the race, Grosjean again looked like - as he has done on multiple occasions this year - trending forward as he lay in sixth.
After all the shenanigans, though, he finished behind team-mate Conor Daly - who had qualified 27th of 28 cars.
Beyond Portland, just how has Grosjean's season been?
And if we put aside his 'reputation' and the amount of stick he gets from other drivers and just judge him like we would any other driver, how does his year stack up?
Grosjean’s 2024
The good
Long Beach - turned 16th into eighth
Barber - finished 12th from 11th, but tricky strategies meant a mixed up order
Indy GP - drove from 23rd to 12th despite being pushed off track by Santino Ferrucci as their feud hit fever pitch
Road America - qualified 14th and turned that into seventh
Laguna Seca - qualified eighth and turned that into fourth
Iowa II - despite Juncos' short-oval struggles, qualified 16th and finished 10th
Toronto - fifth on the grid only converted to ninth at the finish, but that's still a top-10
The bad
St Pete - qualified sixth but crashed into Linus Lundqvist in the race, lost drive and retired
Mid-Ohio - spun solo from 13th with four laps to go, finished 23rd
Portland - spun while running sixth, finished 27th
The ‘not his fault’
Indy 500 - the car was a struggle all month, finished 19th from 26th
Detroit - had been up to fifth from 14th but was taken out by Christian Lundgaard, finished 23rd
Iowa I - taken out in a crash, finished 24th
Gateway - taken out in a crash, recovered to 16th
As you can see from our cross-section, the good does appear to outweigh the bad - and while certainly some good results have been thrown away via mistakes and what appears like a lack of concentration, his peaks have put the team in very, very good positions on occasion.
Really good finishes were likely taken away at Detroit, Iowa and Gateway that would easily bump him into the top 15 in the championship.
That would be a success for Juncos Hollinger.
It’s only two and a bit years into full-time competition in IndyCar and one and a bit years into running two cars. It’s had high turnover of personnel lower down in the organisation - as other equivalent teams have, that’s normal - and an incredible amount of strain has been placed on it at various times.
The main cause of trouble this season was through fans of the team sending death threats to then-McLaren driver Theo Pourchaire - McLaren then being a marketing partner of Juncos before this incident caused the end of that relationship - and Agustin Canapino’s patchy form, which led to him being dropped with five races to go in favour of Daly.
Even with these problems you’d expect, after another off-season of investment and development, that Juncos would have made at least a slight step forwards from 2023, but that doesn’t appear to be the case going by results.
Grosjean is currently behind where Callum Ilott finished the championship - he’s 17th and Ilott was 16th - although Grosjean’s points per race tally is fractionally higher.
Grosjean's already had five top-10s to Illott's three. But his average finish is lower.
And Ilott himself had plenty of incidents where things were out of his control, like Grosjean has.
Despite Grosjean's experience, he hasn't done enough to be considered a clear upgrade on Ilott in hindsight.
What’s next for Juncos & Grosjean
First, the team needs to finish the last three races strong, aim for the top 15 with Grosjean and get its second car into the Leaders' Circle of top 22 cars as that pays $1 million.
About every rumour possible has been floated for what might happen to Juncos Hollinger at the end of the year. Selling the team, ex-Williams director Brad Hollinger selling his share, the DeFrancescos buying into the team - all these possibilities have been floated.
Hollinger leaving seems unlikely at this point, as does a joint sale of the team, although not getting as much sponsorship as they would have liked has likely placed a significant strain.
The DeFrancescos coming on board in some capacity seems more likely than a sale, and The Race’s sources indicate that the team is keen to keep Grosjean and has some sort of mechanism within his contract to do that, although the specifics of the clauses and options are not clear.
Grosjean hasn’t addressed his future publicly for a while, so how this bruising season has affected him will be a big factor. Stepping back into a smaller team from Andretti will be a familiar experience after his time at Dale Coyne, but still likely will have been a culture shock. And he has been competing in sportscars with Lamborghini, too.
All in all, it seems the most likely option is that Grosjean and Devlin DeFrancesco, the pair having already been team-mates at Andretti, will be reunited as the line-up.
But a lot can change and change very quickly in IndyCar’s silly season. Ricardo Juncos, after all, is the person who brought over Canapino, an Argentinian tin-top champion who hadn't raced a single seater before coming to IndyCar.
There's plenty of drivers on the market that could still catch the eye of the team's co-owner.
