Lewis Hamilton clinched his seventh World Drivers' Championship with a superb victory in difficult conditions in Istanbul. Grip was hard to find in the dry, let alone the wet conditions in the first Turkish Grand Prix since 2011. Championships were claimed all over the globe, two in Spain, three in Bahrain, two in France and two in the United States. Sebring was 12 hours of chaos. The LMP1 era came to a close. The GTE class is on the verge of a disaster. This week, we look at a driver who will be leaving Formula One at the end of 2020 and is potentially making a continental change. We explore if it is the right decision. Here is a rundown of what got me thinking.
Should Romain Grosjean Come to IndyCar?
After 11 years in Formula One, Romain Grosjean likely will be looking for a new series to call home in 2021, barring some unforeseen decision from a team principal.
With Grosjean's Formula One career coming to an end, he is playing the field. After previously downplaying interest in IndyCar, the Frenchman has had a strong change of heart in the last few weeks ever since Haas announced it would not be retaining him and Grosjean has openly been looking for an IndyCar opportunity.
Grosjean is only 34 years old with plenty of a career ahead of him. With Scott Dixon fresh off a championship at 40, Sébastien Bourdais a regular contender at 41, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Will Power each turning 40 this offseason, and Takuma Sato now a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner at 43, both coming after Sato hit 40 years old, Grosjean could have a lengthy and successful career in IndyCar.
While his time in Formula One was not the most plentiful, Grosjean was respectable. Victory never came, but he stood on the podium ten times. The best he did in the championship was seventh. A decade ago, he was one of the best prospects in Formula One. He got tossed into Renault after the team's falling out with the Nelson Piquet, Jr., just when the Crashgate saga was beginning. He was out of the ride and it would take him three years to get back to Formula One with a detour to the FIA GT1 World Championship, Auto GP and a return to the GP2 Series in-between.
For a moment, it appeared Grosjean's Formula One career was over in a blink, and yet it turned into a career that spanned a decade. He didn't do it with loads of money. In fact, he was the first driver Haas took a chance on when it entered the series. His presence on the IndyCar grid would only add to the series, not diminish it.
However, is IndyCar the right series for Grosjean?
Unlike Formula One, Grosjean will now likely need to bring some funding to get a full-time ride. While he never ran for one of the top three teams in Formula One and is used to the midfield experience, IndyCar's midfield experience is quite different. The middle of IndyCar isn't some multi-million-dollar haven where the hospitality suite has luxurious furniture and all the fixings. Grosjean will have to get used to plastic folding chairs.
IndyCar is a change on the track as well. Tire blankets aren't keeping the four corners warm. There are fewer driver aides, but that isn't necessarily better. I cannot guarantee he will like the brakes. There will not be race-to-race updates to improve the car. The car is the car, universal aero kit and all. A damper change could be made, but other than that any improve will have to come from driver feedback.
You would think Grosjean is setup for the change. IndyCar is a step down technically speaking from Formula One. For everything Grosjean has seen at the highest level of motorsport, he should be able to step comfortably into IndyCar. But what if that isn't the case?
Grosjean's possible switch got me thinking about other recent Formula One drivers to come stateside and how they fared. The truth is not many Formula One drivers have made the switch in the 21st century.
Nineteen drivers with a Formula One start have debuted in an American open-wheel series since 2000. Some of those include Timo Glock, who is remember for his time in Toyota, but Glock had one Formula One start before he competed in the 2005 Champ Car season, and Jean Alesi, who started the 2012 Indianapolis 500 in a feeble Lotus program that lasted all of nine laps.
A few of those 19 drivers only sampled IndyCar, such as the likes of Mika Salo, Franck Montagny and Esteban Gutiérrez made four, three and seven starts respectively. Remember Alex Young and Antônio Pizzonia? Those two drivers count as a part of the 19 with four starts and five starts respectively. Fernando Alonso is also in that boat with only two Indianapolis 500 starts to his name.
Two decades is quite a long time and the likes of Tora Takagi and Shinji Nakano count toward that total. No offense to either driver, but it is hard to compare the switch of drivers who competed in Formula One in the late 1990s to a driver leaving Formula One in 2020. Enrique Bernoldi also fits this description with his last Formula One start coming in 2002 before making his IndyCar debut six years later.
Not many past Formula One drivers can say they made a career in IndyCar in the last two decades. As much as we sell IndyCar as a secondary option for the Formula One fallouts, this isn't the era of Emerson Fittipaldi, Teo Fabi, Roberto Guerrero, Maurício Gugelman, Eliseo Salazar, Eddie Cheever, Raul Boesel, Stefan Johansson and Nigel Mansell filling an IndyCar grid.
For comparison, the 35 drivers that competed in the 2020 IndyCar season averaged 16.1714 Formula One starts, however, only six drivers have started a grand prix and that includes Fernando Alonso's 312 starts. If you remove Alonso, the average falls to 10.318 starts and if you only take the top 22 drivers, the average again falls to 7.47 starts.
In 1990, the top 35 drivers in CART average 15.257 Formula One starts with nine drivers having started a Formula One race. If you took the top 22 from 1990, the average goes up to 24.181 starts, and that is prior to Michael Andretti sampling of Formula One and Mansell's arrival.
If you fast-forward to 1994, after Andretti runs with McLaren, Mansell is still in the series, and the likes of Gugelmin and Johansson have since joined CART, the average number of grand prix starts for the top 35 drivers is 26.257 with the top 22 averaging 35.772 grand prix starts. The number of drivers with a grand prix start remained the same at nine compared to the 1990 season.
If you looked just at the drivers with Formula One experience, 2020 holds up to 1990 even without Alonso. Sato, Rossi, Ericsson, Chilton and Bourdais averaged 62.25 starts while the nine drivers from 1990 averaged 53.4 starts. However, the nine drivers from 1994 averaged 91.9 grand prix starts.
It is hard to judge how Grosjean will do because so few of his contemporaries have tried IndyCar.
That trend has changed in recent seasons. Grosjean has raced against Max Chilton, Alexander Rossi and Marcus Ericsson in Formula One. All three have hung around in IndyCar and had various degrees of success.
Rossi is a multi-time race winner, a yearly championship contender and one of the five best in IndyCar today. Ericsson is getting there after showing a few flashes of brilliance as a rookie. The Swede's sophomore season was much more encouraging. Chilton has had a few good days, but results have been harder to come by, though he remains one of the most consistent drivers in bringing the car home in one piece.
Grosjean also raced against Rubens Barrichello and, though Barrichello only spent one season in IndyCar, he ran respectably. Barrichello did not come in and dominate IndyCar. There was a learning curve he had to face. He didn't get a top five finish until the 13th race of the season. His best finish was fourth at Sonoma. His only other top five was a fifth in Baltimore, but he picked up top ten finishes at Milwaukee and Iowa and was 11th in the Indianapolis 500. He was 12th in the championship with an average finish of 11.928. If funding had not been an issue, Barrichello could have returned and increased his competitiveness in 2013.
Sato might be the best comparison for Grosjean, even though the two drivers just missed each other in Formula One. Sato has been in IndyCar for 11 seasons. He had plenty of bad days, but he has turned into a regular threat. He has six victories and, once again, two of those are Indianapolis 500 victories! Another is Gateway. Sato's best championship finish in Formula One was eighth and he had one podium finish. Though easily a second-tier driver in Formula One, Sato didn't just march into IndyCar and start winning races. In fact, 2020 saw him score his best IndyCar championship finish in seventh and that came with fewer victories, fewer podium finishes and fewer top five finishes than the year before.
Justin Wilson might not have had a lengthy Formula One career, and he might have run in a different era compared to Grosjean, but the former Minardi and former Jaguar driver made 174 starts in IndyCar, 38th all-time in starts. Wilson had seven victories in his career, notably being responsible for Dale Coyne Racing's first victory after 25 years of waiting. He was in the top ten of 94 races and his average finish was 9.766.
While the number of comparable Formula One drivers is low, a few notable contemporaries from Grosjean's junior formula career took a crack at IndyCar. Grosjean and Charlie Kimball were teammates in Formula Three Euro Series in 2006. Kimball was ahead of Grosjean in the championship that year and even won a race at Zandvoort ahead Sebastian Vettel and Kazuki Nakajima. Since then, Kimball has gone on to make 155 IndyCar starts, won a race, picked up a half-dozen podium finishes and was ninth in the championship twice.
Luca Filippi was one of Grosjean's rivals in GP2. Filippi and Grosjean were teammates at ART Grand Prix for the first five rounds of 2008. Filippi never got a shot at a full-time IndyCar ride, but he showed strong qualifying pace and picked up a runner-up finish in Toronto in 2015. Mike Conway overlapped with Grosjean in GP2 in 2008. Conway went on to become a master of IndyCar road courses, winning for Andretti Autosport, Dale Coyne Racing and Ed Carpenter Racing.
The first year in IndyCar will be the toughest. Grosjean will likely not be at Penske, Ganassi or Andretti. He likely wouldn't even land at a second-tier team of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing or Arrow McLaren SP, but IndyCar is setup where on the right day any team can have its moment. Most of the Formula One outcasts started at a lower team. Sato and Wilson started at KV Racing and Conquest Racing respectively. Ericsson spent a year at Schmidt Peterson Motorsports before the Ganassi opportunity opened up. But then you have Conway, who made it work wherever he went.
If Grosjean wants to be successful in IndyCar and winning races, he might have to make a two or three-year commitment. If he wants to be champion, it will require the rest of his career, easily the next decade at a minimum. The good news is IndyCar is flexible and Grosjean can pair sports car opportunities with a full-time IndyCar gig and there is a lengthy offseason for him to decompress if he needed it.
This all also applies to Grosjean's Haas teammate, Kevin Magnussen. Magnussen is only 28 years old. He could put together a 200-plus start IndyCar career, be a frequent winner and possibly champion. He competed against the likes of Rossi, Chilton, Ericsson in Formula One and Felix Rosenqvist and Jack Harvey while developing in Europe. It is just a matter of Magnussen needing to tough out a year or two before something greater opens.
Given the right amount of time, Grosjean could be an IndyCar race winner. Dale Coyne Racing might not be the flashy team on paper, but it is an outfit where the Frenchman could achieve strong results. He could either make it work at DCR for two or three years or a strong year one could find himself moving to a larger organization immediately.
There are not many open options this offseason. Grosjean could choose not to cross the Atlantic if he does not like his selection, but he is 34 years old. If it doesn't work out for 2021, he will have 2022. IndyCar is a welcoming option if Grosjean is a welcoming participant.
Champions From the Weekend
You know about Lewis Hamilton, but did you know...
Joan Mir clinched the 2020 MotoGP championship with a seventh-place finish at Valencia.
The #7 Acura Team Penske Acura of Ricky Taylor and Hélio Castroneves clinched the IMSA Daytona Prototype international championship with an eighth-place finish at Sebring. It is Taylor's third championship and Castroneves' first championship.
The #86 Meyer Shank Racing Acura of Mario Farnbacher and Matt McMurry clinched the GT Daytona championship with a third-place finish at Sebring. It is Farnbacher's second consecutive championship in class and McMurry's second consecutive year with a championship after winning the LMP2 title last year.
The #7 Toyota of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López clinched the World Endurance LMP Drivers' Championship with its victory in the 8 Hours of Bahrain.
The #95 Aston Martin of Marco Sørensen and Nicki Thiim clinched the World Endurance GTE Drivers' Championship with a fifth-place finish in Bahrain.
The #83 AF Corse Ferrari of Emmanuel Collard, Nicklas Nielsen and François Perrodo clinched the Endurance Trophy for GTE AM Drivers championship with a runner-up finish in Bahrain.
Alessandro Pier Guidi clinched the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup champion after his victory in the Circuit Paul Ricard 1000km driving the #51 AF Corse Ferrari with Tom Blomqvist and Côme Ledogar.
Timur Boguslavkiy clinched the GT World Challenge Europe championship with an 18th-place finish at Circuit Paul Ricard.
Yvan Ehrlacher clinched the World Touring Car Cup championship with two sixth-place finishes and a runner-up at Aragón.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about many champions, but did you know...
The #55 Mazda of Jonathan Bomarito, Harry Tincknell and Ryan Hunter-Reay won the 12 Hours of Sebring. The #52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Oreca-Gibson of Simon Trummer, Patrick Kelly and Scott Huffaker won in the LMP2 class. The #911 Porsche of Nick Tandy, Frédéric Makowiecki and Earl Bamber won in the GTLM class. The #16 Wright Motorsport Porsche of Patrick Long, Ryan Hardwick and Jan Heylen won in the GTD class.
Franco Morbidelli won the Valencian Community Grand Prix, his third victory of the season. Jorge Martín won the Moto2 race, his second victory of the season. Tony Arbolino won the Moto3 race, his first victory of the season.
The #38 Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca-Gibson of Gabriel Aubry, Ho-Pin Tung and Will Stevens won in the LMP2 class at the 8 Hours of Bahrain. The #92 Porsche of Michael Christiansen and Kévin Estre won in GTE-Pro. The #56 Project 1 Porsche of Larry ten Voorde, Egidio Perfetti and Jörg Bergmeister won in GTE-Am.
Esteban Guerrieri, Yvan Muller and Santiago Urrutia split the WTCC races from Aragón.
Tomoki Nojiri won the Super Formula race from Autopolis.
Coming Up This Weekend
MotoGP concludes its 2020 season with its debut at Portimão.
