Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. Due to the high volume of questions received, we can’t guarantee that every letter will be published, but we’ll answer as many as we can. Published questions may be edited for length and clarity. Questions received after 3pm ET each Monday will appear the following week.
Q: Romain Grosjean is popular, but his Andretti tenure has been a real mess: woefully inconsistent, plenty of plain bad luck, weird problems with the car (the steering column that breaks twice?) and some awful strategy calls combined with bad pitstops from the team.
He’s definitely more affected by confidence more than most drivers. If he’s on a streak then he’s damn quick; if he’s on the back of a few bad results then he pushes too hard and errors creep in. Just bring the car home, for crying out loud. I’ve screamed at the TV more times than enough.
I still remember Laguna Seca when he was driving for Dale Coyne Racing… Romain pushed like hell, sending his car on like no tomorrow. I’d love to see a big reset and a return to Dale Coyne Racing, IndyCar is better for having Romain in my opinion.
Jack Taylor, UK
MARSHALL PRUETT: It was a bad season for drivers who were at the end of two-year IndyCar contracts: Grosjean, Jack Harvey, Helio Castroneves, Simon Pagenaud and Conor Daly, too, I believe.
Romain’s speed is highly respected, and that’s the thing some midfield teams are interested in acquiring. At Coyne, there were no expectations and he was impressive in that no-pressure environment. At Andretti, as the replacement for Captain America, it was nothing but pressure, and it took he and race engineer Olivier Boisson most of 2022 to shape the car’s handling into something he could drive hard.
Things got off to a great start in 2023, but there were too many driving errors, mechanical miscues, and emotions boiling over. Andretti is the wrong team for such things to happen, and that’s why the relationship deteriorated so quickly. If this happened at a place like Team Penske, you can rest assured a dressing down from Roger, or an ice-cold come-to-Jesus interaction with Tim Cindric would have kept Romain in line and focused on getting the best from himself.
For where I understand he’s most likely headed, Juncos Hollinger Racing, I do have concerns about the same boiling over of emotions between driver and team owner, so if that deal gets done, let’s hope matches are kept far away from what could be a combustible situation.
Q: Nolan Allaer just won the Formula Ford SCCA national championship in the same car his uncle used to win it in 2011. Maybe the DW12 isn’t so old after all. 😉
Tom Hinshaw, Santa Barbara, CA
MP: The difference here is Formula Fords never stop being relevant or cool. I frequently dream of having my 1980 Tiga Formula Ford back in my hands…
Q: I have a suggestion for Penske Entertainment about how to market its potential exhibition yawner at Thermal Club next spring. How about calling it the Austin Powers Classic? $1 million was a whole lot of money in the ‘60s. Today, not so much. Not even second place in so many of the ubiquitous weekend golf tournaments. I highly doubt touting the size of that purse will draw a lot of interest. If anything it’s maybe a little embarrassing for the country’s top open-wheel series.
Not sure who calls the shots, but seems like they (and IndyCar fans) would have been better off staging a real points race on one of the NASCAR sunbelt tracks. It’s a perfect time to have leveraged a new venue, since NASCAR so badly wanted to be back on the oval at Indy. Instead, appears NASCAR actually had some influence, even if slight, on the Texas cancellation. Like I said, who calls the IndyCar shots?