MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Romain Grosjean cannot slow down, even for a moment, or he’ll never get anywhere.
Grosjean, the ex-Formula One racer turned IndyCar driver, is making the rounds in the F1 paddock at the Miami Grand Prix. It’s just his second visit to a grand prix since his F1 career ended, and he’s in high demand.
Fans flock to him. Crew members and personnel from assorted teams stop him for a chat. Even international journalists go out of their way to shake hands and say hello.
When Grosjean finally has a moment, it’s nearly 7 p.m. at the end of a nonstop day. Even then, as Grosjean sneaks into the media center lobby to sit with The Athletic for an interview, people keep spotting him and taking a detour to have a quick conversation.
You’re looking good, one crew member tells him.
“IndyCar is very physical,” Grosjean replies. “I have to push quite a bit!”
You having fun in Indy? another asks.
“I love it,” Grosjean answers. “The oval is something different. You look from the outside and think, ‘Actually, that is easy.’ Then you go in there and it’s like, ‘Uh, no.’ It’s almost bloody!”
Stuart Morrison, the press officer from Grosjean’s former home at Haas F1 Team, walks by and stops in his tracks.
“It looks like you’re willingly doing media!” Morrison says. “This is a shock to the system.”
“I’ve changed, brother!” Grosjean answers with a wide grin.
Miami was a new grand prix on the F1 calendar, but it was also a new home race for Grosjean. The Swiss-born Frenchman moved his family — wife Marion and their three children — from Geneva to South Florida earlier this year after he realized the US-based IndyCar Series felt like home.
And he couldn’t be happier about it.
“To move my whole family, I had to choose a place where life would be extraordinary — as we have in Miami,” he says. “We’ve got great weather. We can go to the beach every weekend. The kids could be in the pool on the first of January and they’re going to be in the pool on the 31st of December. For us, it was just a very easy way of transitioning and having a great life.”
Life in general is something Grosjean doesn’t take for granted. In December 2020, during what turned out to be the final race of his 10-year F1 career, Grosjean was going 119 mph when he crashed through a metal barrier at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
In a horrifying scene, Grosjean and his car became engulfed in flames. He had only moments to escape death. Somehow, after nearly 30 seconds, he wedged himself free from the twisted, fiery wreckage and emerged from the inferno. Grosjean suffered severe burns on his hands — the scars of which remain today — but miraculously was otherwise mostly unscathed.
The incident gained him the nickname “The Phoenix” in the process — a moniker Grosjean has embraced. In Miami, he wore a polo shirt with a custom “The Phoenix” logo — along with a near-constant smile. His sunny disposition about motorsports, despite experiencing a terrifying incident, is part of the reason American fans have been drawn to him.
“They like my story of rising from the ashes,” he says.
The other part of it? Grosjean has fully embraced America. During his first IndyCar season last year, in which he ran all of the races except for the ovals, Grosjean spent time driving his motorhome around the country and experiencing life in the United States — documenting all of it along the way.
He now loves the US and considers it home, which is funny considering how much he hated the country after visiting for the first time in 2012. On that trip, he had landed in Austin for a race at Circuit of the Americas and lost his luggage , so he walked around downtown looking for a place to buy a toothbrush.
Not a single drug store could be found. Finally, Grosjean was told he’d have to drive somewhere outside the city center to find a toothbrush.
“I was like, ‘What?!’” he says. “I was far too European.”
Grosjean came back the next year more open-minded, then grew to love his visits more and more. Now he’s all in on the American lifestyle, which he balances with the international flair of the Miami area. His children attend a French school and they’ve found friends in the expat community.
“It feels like home while being 5,000 miles from home,” he says. “I’m still struggling with inches and yards and stuff like that. But honestly, I think I was born to live in the US
“I need to stop eating so many donuts, though.”
Many IndyCar drivers choose to live near the race teams in Indianapolis, but Grosjean said he’s enough of a veteran that he doesn’t feel the need to be neighbors with the Andretti Autosport shop. There are times when he must travel to Indy for simulator sessions, and he finds himself groaning at his 4 am wake-up calls for a 6 am flight. But by the time he lands back in Miami, “you see the sea and the blue sky and you think, ‘Oh, well it wasn’t that bad,’” he says.
Grosjean loves that Americans seem to celebrate others for having nice things. When he rolls up in a sweet car, people give him a thumbs up. When he rode his 1981 BMW R100RS motorbike to the Miami track, people stopped him at a red light to ask about the bike and tell him how cool it was.
“I just love the mentality,” he says. “I love that there is no jealousy. Everything is open and people are happy to see good stuff.”
The same goes for the culture in IndyCar. Grosjean says he felt immediately comfortable there because he was embraced by not only fans, but drivers and teams as well.
“It’s like I’ve been one of them from Day 1,” he says. “In F1, it’s a bit more selfish. It’s hard to get together with drivers. It’s just a different mentality and harder to create links.”
(Brian Spurlock / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
But not everyone has been thrilled with Grosjean since he arrived in IndyCar. After he appeared to make intentional contact with Graham Rahal in a race at Barber Motorsports Park earlier this month, Rahal blasted Grosjean by saying the incident fit into the Frenchman’s reputation and told NBC Sports he received texts from 10 other drivers agreeing with his pointed comments.
The two later spoke, but Rahal said the conversation involved Grosjean telling him, “You don’t stay in Formula One for 10 years unless you’re top-notch level.”
Is Grosjean good for IndyCar? Rahal said he couldn’t care less, and argued IndyCar should be emphasizing its talented young stars like Colton Herta and Pato O’Ward instead of Grosjean.
“You’ve got guys right now who deserve a lot more attention and that, to me, is the biggest thing,” Rahal said. “… (IndyCar) is putting a lot of eggs in Grosjean’s basket.”
Other drivers described Grosjean as being what they expected: An aggressive driver whose style fits what they watched on TV for a decade of F1 races.
“We’ve seen that from him in the past,” Josef Newgarden said. “We’ve all been aware of what Romain’s reputation or driving style was in Formula One, and it’s not too dissimilar to what he’s done in IndyCar so far.”
That said, Grosjean’s presence in IndyCar has been a boost for the series because it draws in some fans from the rapidly rising F1. Grosjean was named as IndyCar’s most popular driver following his first season and his fame has helped IndyCar grow in Europe.
Understanding his role in promoting the series to the F1 fan base, Grosjean makes recap videos on his YouTube channel to help spread the word about IndyCar for those who live overseas and might not be able to watch the races live.
And you can bet many will be tuning in on Sunday to watch Grosjean in his first attempt at the Indy 500.
O’Ward described Grosjean as “super nice” off the track and said “we all enjoy having him in the series because it’s brought the series up.”
“Very high profile drivers are very interested in coming to IndyCar, and that’s making the series grow,” O’Ward said. “I mean, the guy is living the American dream. He’s loving it.”
Grosjean says he didn’t expect the strong fan support in America at all and suspects no one else did, either. At the Long Beach Grand Prix last month, Grosjean marveled at the long line for his autograph session and found it difficult to wade through the crowd for his postrace press conference after he finished second.
Though he has yet to win an IndyCar race, his four podiums in 18 starts have been highly enjoyable for a driver who only had one F1 podium in his final seven seasons.
At age 36, Grosjean is competitive again. And he’s happier than ever.
“For me, it’s just having the joy of coming to a race weekend and knowing I can score a pole and win races,” he says. “Bloody hell. That’s just what I wanted.”
(Photo: Dan Istitene – Formula 1 / Formula 1 via Getty Images)
