The final round of the IndyCar series marked the highly anticipated debut for a new Formula 1 driver on an oval since Fernando Alonso first made the Indianapolis 500 debut four years ago.
Romain Grosjean did well when it was launched at Gateway Motorsports Park, the two-kilometer speedway in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri.
Grosjean has been looking forward to this since he first considered IndyCar as an option for his post-Formula 1 career. Before seeing the schedule for 2021, the then Haas F1 driver assumed there were more than four oval races planned. However, his willingness to experiment with a different and possibly more dangerous form of racing was understandably dampened by his horror crash at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
After signing a deal with Dale Coyne and Rick Ware in February, Grosjean initially planned to only run the street and street courses but reserved the option to run at Gateway towards the end of the season. Following his family’s approval and a successful open test in July, he officially added the Gateway 500 to his 2021 list from last weekend.
Grosjean retired with the driver he could replace next year. The only question left now was how Grosjean would fare in his first race in a new racing discipline. Would he emulate the stormy success of Nigel Mansell, who only lost every short oval race on the 1993 calendar because of a broken neck in an accident in Phoenix? Or would he run in the back half of the field, hoping to avoid the same fate as Alex Zanardi and Takuma Sato, who both crashed on their oval debuts?
On paper, his results didn’t seem like anything special: he qualified 14th out of 24 cars and ended up in the same position, one lap behind winner Josef Newgarden. Still, there were flashes of brilliance that suggested that at least a top 10 placement was possible.
Take, for example, his fiery attack across the field after a restart on lap 77. Until then it had been difficult for Grosjean to get into a steady rhythm after four crash warnings meant 40 of the first 75 laps were yellowed .
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“We just have to keep digging, as it says on the oval,” said Grosjean’s race engineer Olivier Boisson over the radio to his driver shortly before the restart of the race – with Grosjean back where he started the race, 14th and so on a fresh set of tires.
The ex-F1 driver has already finished second twice this year. To get into the top 10, Grosjean first had to beat Tony Kanaan against a former series champion and Indy 500 winner. It took a few laps, but Grosjean managed to pass on lap 84.
A lap later, Grosjean and Dalton Kellett were brushing the wheels as they dived into turn three together. This meant that the races of both drivers could have ended in no time. Instead, Grosjean simply drove past Kellett to 12th place. All lingering fears of fighting hard for the position after his crash at the Bahrain Grand Prix were clearly a thing of the past.
Within another three laps he was past Conor Daly, one of the most underrated oval runners in the series. In another two laps he had broken into the top ten by overtaking Jack Harvey. And then, one lap after overtaking Harvey, Grosjean overtook fellow rookie Scott McLaughlin, whose best-ever result of the season was at the 1.5-mile bullring at Texas Motor Speedway.
Grosjean has embarked on a lengthy battle with former Indy 500 winner and serial champion Ryan Hunter-Reay, the man who, according to many in the paddock, will replace next season at Andretti. This time Hunter-Reay was able to keep his likely successor in check until he pitted for routine service.
For Grosjean, it could have ended in disaster on 173 of 260 laps when his purple number 51 washed out of the preferred line through turns one and two, into the marbles and millimeters away from the SAFER barrier. Daly, Harvey and Simon Pagenaud were all able to overtake him without any problems.
That taught him an important lesson about oval racing versus racing on street and street circuits: if a driver misses his line on a street circuit through a curve, he has at least 10 more corners to make up for it. If a driver misses his markings on a corner of an oval, he will have compromised at least half of his lap in the blink of an eye.
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Grosjean made his last scheduled pit stop on lap 183, which put him off the lead lap. He was one lap behind for the rest of the race thanks to a warning on lap 201 for Alexander Rossi, who had an accident on the second corner.
What did the man himself think of finishing his first oval race? “It was a very, very good experience,” recalls Grosjean. “We tried a strategy that didn’t quite work in our direction, so the end result isn’t as good as our race, but we had a fast car, we learned a lot.”
“I made a few mistakes on cold tires and got caught in the marbles, but I managed to save it and made some good passes. I am satisfied with this first oval race. “
Rookie McLaughlin did well with ovals. This was a tough race with more than a third of the field giving up due to falls or mechanical errors. Grosjean’s result ensured he stayed in touch with McLaughlin, who took the coveted Rookie of the Year title. The pair is separated by 23 points, with up to 156 points available over the final trio of races.
The fact that it is so close between McLaughlin and Grosjean with three races to go is surprising. Grosjean skipped the previous three oval races, including the Indianapolis 500, the only race with colons on the schedule. The Indy 500 was a missed opportunity for McLaughlin to potentially take the season’s Rookie of the Year fight out of reach, whether or not Grosjean was running Gateway.
McLaughlin, still getting used to the tremendous shift from Australian supercars to single-seaters, has yet to score a top five finish on a street circuit. Grosjean therefore looks well placed to put his Penske rivals in the standings under pressure in the remaining laps.
The championship will be decided in a trio of races in quick succession starting this weekend on the Portland Street Circuit. The series will then switch to another street circuit, Laguna Seca, which Grosjean has already tested on, and end on the streets of Long Beach.
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