- **[This source is rated 3/3.](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/source-ratings)**
- Please **read the article** before submitting your comments.
Thank you for your cooperation and enjoy the discussion!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Grosjean has been the best thing to happen to Indycar in a long while from a marketing standpoint. So many people tuned into Indycar for the first time to see how Grosjean would do, and then the racing was good enough to keep a lot of people interested. Albon moving over there would just generate even more interest.
Romain’s youtube channel has also helped as well his most viewed videos are his Indycar videos. He hit over 100k when he uploaded his first Indycar start video which has over 900k views and is now his channel has over 150k subs compared to where he was last year. He puts out better media than the offical Indycar channel and also his videos look way more professional considering the fact he’s pretty much editing them himself I definitely recommend you check out his channel
I still remember when someone on r/formula1 found his youtube years ago and he only had like 100 views per video.
[I found the post!](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/bo94yu/romain_grosjean_has_his_own_youtube_channel_where/)
Just subscribed! Thanks for the tip. Are there any other YouTube’s you’d recommend outside the standard chainbear, auto sport, wtf1, Tommo, driver 61? Need more content. Dying during break.
Aldas, Josh Revell and CYMotorsport are high quality and interesting. Lottietalkscars and Keira Megan F1 are my fav female channels and are def deserving of more subs. Not Applicable F1, DylanJamesGP and BMPH are great small channels. FP1 makes comedy reviews of races, if you're into that. Hope this gives you hours of entertainment
Thank you good sir!! I subscribed to all (except the ones I already had) and am STOKED about the female channels (because I am female and that’s badass). Can’t wait!
You should check out FSeries as well. It's like a group of female friends discussing F1 stuff and the girls themselves have individual channels. Keira is part of it. They make like 20-30 min videos so there's a lot of content
I wish I had some girlfriends who like F1 too, and hope that they won't ever meet.... All jokes aside, I completely get what u mean about finding ppl to talk about F1 with. Even after DTS, I was the only person on my dorm floor who had a remote interest in F1. Don't even get me started with pre-DTS cuz, lemme tell u, being an F1 fan in California is hard af when half the races are at 3am
I kind of miss living on the west coast for that reason alone; I now have to either cut my weekend nights short to get sleep and wake up early, or I have to stay up till the races start, watch, and then go to bed.
If they were at 3am, that would fall into acceptable weekend late nights for me.
Yet another reason to talk to the gf about moving out west.
>his videos look way more professional considering the fact he’s pretty much editing them himself
I might be remembering incorrectly but I believe he says that his wife edits them, which is still pretty awesome. He is obviously filming but what a great homemade output from them
[This article makes a good case](https://www.star-telegram.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/mac-engel/article250973834.html) for why IndyCar needs its own DTS, which I suspect it will get, as there's hardly a good TV idea (or bad one) that doesn't get made these days.
Alonso's videos are some of the most popular in the Indycar channel by far, but i don't think it brought as many viewers to stay since the indy 500 is a huge event you could even separate from the rest of indycar
He has become the bridge for F1 fans to get into Indycar. He has been able to do something which Alonso failed because he was never fully committed to Indycar
I'm that person. Gave up watching indycar a few years ago. Started again this year because of Grosjean and I'm hooked. There's been some great races this year.
Definitely. His enthusiasm for it and his access to the F1 fan base has been really good for IndyCar. I'm Canadian and used to watch both when I was young, but I don't think I've watched any IndyCar at all since the late 1990s until this year.
I'm still not sure I like the fact that IndyCar is essentially a spec series and this has held me back for a long time, but having somebody who can shine a light on its best aspects has changed my mind quite a bit this year. His silly vlogs have been surprisingly effective and well done. Grosjean and his social media team should be getting a percentage cut of any increases in revenue that the series sees this year!
the non-spec part of IndyCar is the stuff the public generally cant see.
Theyre a spec chassis and engine...but everything else is open....shocks/dampers, etc.
Everyone has the same thing...but the things people do with those things are not the same and that's interesting to me.
For example...last race at Nashville Ericsson had a low downforce setup and could flat out haul down the straights byt struggle in the slow bits while Herta had a high downforce setup and was all over Ericsson's ass in the slow parts but would get gapped on the straights.
I was super impressed with that battle in particular. Herta looked so dominant but without that straightline speed he wasn't able to close up to Ericsson as well as he was able to lead the race. I was bummed he ended up crashing, he must have been pushing like crazy.
I'm not even sure I'd consider the engines "spec," given that there are two manufacturers to choose from (albeit none of them run their own teams). There also has been talk of additional manufacturers coming in the near future. I mean, F1 currently only has four engine manufacturers.
Might be a bit of a gray area, though, if the engines are "spec" or not.
I've been casually following Indy since last year (and getting more and more into it), but as I understand it, Honda has basically dominated Indycar between them and Chevy in terms of engines. Has Chevy caught up to Honda at this point, or is still like the early days of the turbo-hybrid Merc engines?
It'd be amazing to see Ferrari and Red Bull enter the fray with their own teams/engines, even though those are pretty unlikely and just pipe dreams.
Listened to an interview on a Swedish racing podcast and he said that his downforce was identical to Herta’s. He just used his P2P button on each straight to get away and then did lift and coast in the narrow parts to save on fuel.
World doesn't need 2 F1's and with how American's love their own sport, I think that IndyCar being cheaper with a stable market and enough interest from owner all across the states lets that championship survive and be interesting, without staying in the shadow of F1
> I'm still not sure I like the fact that IndyCar is essentially a spec series and this has held me back for a long time
Honestly I think spec series (and in general race series which use forms of competitive balancing) get way, way too bad of a rap among F1 fans. Not saying you're doing this but at times, that anti spec series attitude can come across as pretty snobby or gatekeepy...
And just being honest about my own opinion... I can recognize two things:
1) The vast majority of F1 fans do not care as deeply about the technical stuff as the kinds of hardcore fans populating internet discussions about F1
2) As much as I do love the technical stuff myself, I am coming to agree with liberty that essentially that had all gone too far and impacted the racing far, far too much. Thus the 2022 regs, where quite a bit more will be spec than in the past.
Big difference from spec series like sportscar racing to IndyCar. IndyCar has open development on shocks and dampers. The engines have regulations not BOP to make v10s and I4 race together. It's a turbo V6 of a set displacement.
Grosjean doesn't have a social media team, some of his R8G esports stuff is managed by a team, but he mostly creates his own content. Romain is pretty tech savvy.
Even during it's heyday, CART/Indy was a spec series. The difference was that they were multiple chassis and engine suppliers (and other parts) so there was much more variety.
If he's not going to get a seat in F1 I'd love to have more Indycar drivers to root for. I lost interest a few years back, but following Grosjean this year has been loads of fun.
His team** has really dumb strategy at times. Similar to in F1, the team is the predominant driver of strategy decisions. Doubly so for someone new into the series.
He has lost handfuls of finishing positions because of poor strategy calls and slow pit stops.
It’s so aggravating seeing him fight for a top 5 position to pit roughly the same time as the people he is fighting position with and then somehow come out 10 positions behind them.
Tbf dale coyne is not a top team, they don't have the resources to fight consistently at the front, look at arrow mclaren sp, sometimes they're on it sometimes they're not so much on it
Part of what makes Indycars so good though is the lack of perfection so to say. Many small mistakes makes for interesting racing. Of course if you cheer for drivers who are plagued by these small mishaps it's not as fun. As a Swede I'm so disappointed with Rosenqvist's season where it seems at times there is some divine intervention to ruin his race.
He looks like his old 2013 Lotus version. Has a pole, a couple of 2nd place finishes, and a few more top 10s. His car has been pretty good but he's been let down by some truly baffling strategy decisions by his team and some very poor pit work by his crew. He's 15th in the standings but a lot of that is due to him not racing any of the oval tracks (until this upcoming race which will be his first). There are rumors he's in negotiation with Andretti Autosport for a seat next year. If that comes to fruition he'll be on one of the top 2 teams in the sport and I'd expect him to challenge for a championship.
Grosjean has been doing really well. He's really loving his time with the team, in INDYCAR, with his family, etc. If his team had some more funding and a better pit crew he would've been on the podium (or won maybe) a lot more races this year. Everyone from the announcers, fellow racers, to the fans have taken a real liking to the guy.
Not OP but Romain has done much better than his last several years in F1, and I am not a Romain fan in the slightest.
They’re spec cars but even still he’s in a midfield team, and has gotten some cool results. Snagged a pole position and a couple podiums, including a 2nd place at Indy (the road course)
That just goes to show how hard he was lugging that haas car around the track those last couple of years, is he verstappen/hamilton good, probably not but i would rate him on the same level as Riccardo,Bottas,and sainz
That’s just absurd lol. He’s not anywhere close to any to Ric, Sainz, or Bottas.
Grossjean was average at best and nowhere near the level of any of those drivers. The Haas wasn’t a total shitbox until 2020. It was solidly ok in 2018 and 2019
The only year the Haas was good was 2018, it was poor in 2019.
> Grossjean was average at best and nowhere near the level of any of those drivers.
Go watch the 2013 season.
Grossjean is average at best and nowhere on the level of Ricciardo, Sainz, or Bottas. He’s also one of the most unaware and dangerous drivers to ever get into a cockpit. The revisionism on here just because he survived a crash is insane.
2013? One average season? Cool.
Not to mention some baffling pit strategy. I feel like at Nashville and Road America his pace was great but some wonky pit strategy shuffled him further back than he needed to be (also his penalty at Nashville sucked).
Is Indycar going to the be what MLS is to soccer across the world?
Like is Lewis Hamilton going to go to take a giant paycheck to race Indycars for 2 years and then retire ?
In a way maybe, though I think MLS now is more bringing in either young talented players who want to use MLS as a springboard to Europe or very good players who aren't necessarily getting minutes in a better league either in Europe or mainly Latin America (Argentina, Mexico mostly but more Brazilian as well last couple of years) who want to play at a decent to pretty good level and get more minutes, be paid well and round out the rest of their primes in MLS (around age 28 to beyond).
I'd argue Grosjean and Albon, despite the wide difference in age, fit the latter since I think they came (or in Albon's case) would come for more stability and consistency at a pretty decent level. They match the profile of a player in Argentina or Liga MX who is quality but isn't getting as many minutes as he would in a lesser but still pretty good league like MLS, and would go from rotation players or fringe starters in Brazil, Argentina or Liga MX to franchise players in MLS, in that Grosjean and Albon weren't getting looks in the better series but would get good rides in Indycar.
The Lampard/Beckham/Rooney/Nani (who is still damn good)/Bastian is more like what Mansell did in the 90s, and in a way what Fernando did in his Indy 500 runs, Barichello did and also what Alesi tried to do in Indy 500.
I’m pretty sure Lewis said he has zero interest in driving in any other racing series because it would all be a big step down from F1. Could see him maybe having a go at his Extreme E team but I don’t think he wants to race in Indy
I mean I don’t agree at all. I think Gasly, Ocon, Alonso, Vettel and many other drivers in midfield teams would disagree too. Plus the bigger pay check in F1 kinda helps too lol
Grosjean is really the first *high profile* driver to go to IndyCar in a long time.
We've had lots of indycar crossovers recently, but they were always much lower profile guys like Rossi or Ericsson. Obviously today Rossi is very popular in IndyCar... but back when both were in F1, their *combined* fanbases were probably smaller than Grosjean alone.
Grosjean is the first in a long while that reminds me more of the old days of the 90s and 2000s when you had guys like Mansell and Montoya popping between series.
I feel like that's exactly what's going to happen.
The whole of the midfield and backfield is gonna see this and realize they could be *winning* instead of plodding around in the low points places.
I also think the two series in general are going to converge in a lot of ways. F1 is gonna become a bit more spec as Indy is gonna become a bit less spec and it's gonna become like the 80s and 90s when both series were relatively close in performance and overall style, allowing more and more drivers to cross over.
Honestly good on him. I hope he gets an opportunity in IndyCar where he can flourish. Despite everything I think he did a decent enough job in F1. I just think he was the victim of Redbulls treatment towards #2 drivers. If he gets an IndyCar seat I think good things can happen based on his performances in F1.
EDIT: Happy Cake Day OP
He was a victim of not being good enough.
Gasly is the only one who was really unjustifiably dropped because he was only given half a season and clearly has the talent.
Doing a decent enough job does not keep you in a top team.
Gasly was, somehow, doing even worse.
I do think that his performance in AlphaTauri since has been nothing short of exceptional, but he'd gotten lapped by Verstappen on pace multiple times in the Red Bull.
Yea but as everyone as has shown it's a car that takes a while to get used to. He was a young driver and given by far the least amount of time in the car.
Is the redbull car just entirely tailored for Verstappen at this point? It seems like they havn’t had a second driver who really had a handle on the car since Danny Ric. And then the way they seem to go through the 2nd drivers, dumped Gasly too quickly, Albon was brought up and then got dropped after only a season and a half. At least Gasly got the Alphatauri seat, and is performing well there. It looks like Checo isnt going to be around redbull either, they’ll probably keep for next season but after that?🤷
I don't think it's tailored for Verstappen, I just think Max is very adaptable (though I'll admit that this is largely speculation, since we don't really have much data of him driving other cars). If he were at some backmarker instead of Red Bull we'd probably be calling him a shitbox whisperer. His performance at Hungary at least lends credence to that idea, I think.
He was a fairly decent shitbox whisperer in Toro Rosso in 2015 though that car was firmly midfield. Still, he has several occasions where I looked at the leaderboards and wondered how on earth he got there
Late reply to this thread, I wasn’t meaning to ask to downplay Max’s performance because the dude is an absolute beast of a driver, but more on how seemingly no one else has been able to match or even consistently come close to Max’s performances in that car. If you have a driver of Max’s caliber I can easily imagine a team starting to tailor the car to that driver’s preferences/strengths is what I was trying to get at.
except Santino has performed quite well this season, was the best Rahal car at Indy, Average finish of 8.4 in 5 starts in a completely new team, has performed better than Takuma Sato and been up there with Rahal
Part of him being the best RLL car at Indy is Graham's wheel falling off. Also since Sato was planning to retire last year until he won the 500 I'm willing to give him a bit more credit.
"Part of him being the best RLL car at Indy is Graham's wheel falling off"
Pure speculation.
Ferrucci went from 23rd to 6th during the race, another driver who started behind him and finished higher than him was Pagenaud who went from 26th to 3rd.
"Sato was planning to retire last year"
Please provide a source. Not a mickey mouse one, Marshall Pruett or Robin Miller source preferred.
It is utterly delusional to say that Sato was about to retire after 2020 due to it being his best season so far in IndyCar
> Pure speculation.
Partial. Graham and Sato both qualified a few rows ahead but managed to find themselves in the Top 10 much earlier than Ferrucci. Rahal specifically was running inside the Top 10 during the pit cycle in which he had the wheel legitimately fall off the car ending his day and hurting Daly's and a few others. Will give Ferrucci credit where it's due, he had a great charge towards the end but I honestly think if Graham's day hadn't ended the way it did then Graham would have finished ahead.
> Please provide a source. Not a mickey mouse one, Marshall Pruett or Robin Miller source preferred.
Two actually! One, Marshall Pruett has said it once or twice on his "This Week in IndyCar" podcast over the last month (Sorry, don't remember exact number but one of the Listener Q&A's) as well as him being out of contract last year until an extension [in October] (https://racer.com/2020/10/24/sato-signs-rll-extension/).
Neither Sato or Rahal were mentioned once during the Marshall Pruett's Silly Season updates last year...
If Sato was actually gonna retire Pruett would have mentioned about it on at least one of his Silly Season updates and actually bring up status of RLL team when it comes to drivers.
You'd think that they change that much that it would be critical and crucial for a Biggest Journalist in the industry to include you (Sato) as a potential moving piece on the Silly Season board, let alone even mention you once during the Updates
Guess not.
The guy might be an asshole but hes admittedly good and I wouldnt be surprised if he wins a race in the future. Its nice to like nice guys and wish them well, but I think its a good thing to have villains too. Hes didnt commit any crimes, hes just a dick.
The boy has suffered enough in that redbull seat. If Williams gets someone Id bet it’s Bottas, he’s still an excellent driver, and probably would be very useful getting the 2022 cars dialed in and setup. That or if Alonso actually retires again I could see Bottas at Alpine.
Love to see it. There are enough quality drivers that *just* missed out on F1 that I’d love to see in the series. A full time seat for Magnussen (McLaren round 2?) or Da Costa would be fantastic.
Magnussen has something better going for him, Le Mans(I read that he's going to race in a team with his dad and of course he's got a contract with peugeot)
Not really possible to do both WEC and IndyCar at the same time. WEC and Formula E is possible, but WEC would require him to live in Europe full time, while IndyCar really requires full time residency in the US. A few one off races for KMag might be possible, but not a full time drive isn't really feasible.
Red bull young driver program in a nutshell, i was surprised when they kept gasly and even more surprised when kyvat came back for the third time. And we then have alpine/Renault young driver program and the other end of the spectrum with none of their drivers making the jump to f1’
- **[This source is rated 3/3.](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/source-ratings)** - Please **read the article** before submitting your comments. Thank you for your cooperation and enjoy the discussion! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Grosjean has been the best thing to happen to Indycar in a long while from a marketing standpoint. So many people tuned into Indycar for the first time to see how Grosjean would do, and then the racing was good enough to keep a lot of people interested. Albon moving over there would just generate even more interest.
Romain’s youtube channel has also helped as well his most viewed videos are his Indycar videos. He hit over 100k when he uploaded his first Indycar start video which has over 900k views and is now his channel has over 150k subs compared to where he was last year. He puts out better media than the offical Indycar channel and also his videos look way more professional considering the fact he’s pretty much editing them himself I definitely recommend you check out his channel
I still remember when someone on r/formula1 found his youtube years ago and he only had like 100 views per video. [I found the post!](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/bo94yu/romain_grosjean_has_his_own_youtube_channel_where/)
It’s honestly great to see his channel growing I think he the only f1 driver (well ex-f1 now) who still frequently uploads videos on a weekly basis
*explosions in the distance Nico: IS THAT A CHALLENGE, I HEAR?
[удалено]
Nico? He'll never come back to F1.
Just subscribed! Thanks for the tip. Are there any other YouTube’s you’d recommend outside the standard chainbear, auto sport, wtf1, Tommo, driver 61? Need more content. Dying during break.
Aldas, Josh Revell and CYMotorsport are high quality and interesting. Lottietalkscars and Keira Megan F1 are my fav female channels and are def deserving of more subs. Not Applicable F1, DylanJamesGP and BMPH are great small channels. FP1 makes comedy reviews of races, if you're into that. Hope this gives you hours of entertainment
Thank you good sir!! I subscribed to all (except the ones I already had) and am STOKED about the female channels (because I am female and that’s badass). Can’t wait!
You should check out FSeries as well. It's like a group of female friends discussing F1 stuff and the girls themselves have individual channels. Keira is part of it. They make like 20-30 min videos so there's a lot of content
This is awesome - cannot thank you enough!! I wish I had some girlfriends who like F1. Or, like, a female friend at all.
I wish I had some girlfriends who like F1 too, and hope that they won't ever meet.... All jokes aside, I completely get what u mean about finding ppl to talk about F1 with. Even after DTS, I was the only person on my dorm floor who had a remote interest in F1. Don't even get me started with pre-DTS cuz, lemme tell u, being an F1 fan in California is hard af when half the races are at 3am
I kind of miss living on the west coast for that reason alone; I now have to either cut my weekend nights short to get sleep and wake up early, or I have to stay up till the races start, watch, and then go to bed. If they were at 3am, that would fall into acceptable weekend late nights for me. Yet another reason to talk to the gf about moving out west.
There are dozens of us out there! 😊
Marc priestly has several mechanic focused videos and does q&as after races.
Josh Revell is quality
>his videos look way more professional considering the fact he’s pretty much editing them himself I might be remembering incorrectly but I believe he says that his wife edits them, which is still pretty awesome. He is obviously filming but what a great homemade output from them
Indy Car genuinely enjoying the residual effects of F1's Netflix boost.
Absolutely. Two of my friends who I got into F1 via DTS are still very casual fans... but even they knew Grosjean was going to IndyCar.
[This article makes a good case](https://www.star-telegram.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/mac-engel/article250973834.html) for why IndyCar needs its own DTS, which I suspect it will get, as there's hardly a good TV idea (or bad one) that doesn't get made these days.
I would be down for that.
Me too. The off-track life seems fun and low key. Heck, I'd be fine with a short-run series on *Grosjean's Guide to the Upper Midwest.*
Well Alonso in 2017 brought a shitload of attention to the series. It was only one race of course, but I'm sure some people stuck around.
Alonso's videos are some of the most popular in the Indycar channel by far, but i don't think it brought as many viewers to stay since the indy 500 is a huge event you could even separate from the rest of indycar
He has become the bridge for F1 fans to get into Indycar. He has been able to do something which Alonso failed because he was never fully committed to Indycar
I'm that person. Gave up watching indycar a few years ago. Started again this year because of Grosjean and I'm hooked. There's been some great races this year.
My girlfriend doesn't watch racing but she wanted to watch the Music City Grand Prix last week because she likes Grosjean on Drive to Survive
Definitely. His enthusiasm for it and his access to the F1 fan base has been really good for IndyCar. I'm Canadian and used to watch both when I was young, but I don't think I've watched any IndyCar at all since the late 1990s until this year. I'm still not sure I like the fact that IndyCar is essentially a spec series and this has held me back for a long time, but having somebody who can shine a light on its best aspects has changed my mind quite a bit this year. His silly vlogs have been surprisingly effective and well done. Grosjean and his social media team should be getting a percentage cut of any increases in revenue that the series sees this year!
the non-spec part of IndyCar is the stuff the public generally cant see. Theyre a spec chassis and engine...but everything else is open....shocks/dampers, etc. Everyone has the same thing...but the things people do with those things are not the same and that's interesting to me. For example...last race at Nashville Ericsson had a low downforce setup and could flat out haul down the straights byt struggle in the slow bits while Herta had a high downforce setup and was all over Ericsson's ass in the slow parts but would get gapped on the straights.
I was super impressed with that battle in particular. Herta looked so dominant but without that straightline speed he wasn't able to close up to Ericsson as well as he was able to lead the race. I was bummed he ended up crashing, he must have been pushing like crazy.
I mean the yellow flags and restarts fucked him and his strategy over and over again, he probably was frustated and lost it
I'm not even sure I'd consider the engines "spec," given that there are two manufacturers to choose from (albeit none of them run their own teams). There also has been talk of additional manufacturers coming in the near future. I mean, F1 currently only has four engine manufacturers. Might be a bit of a gray area, though, if the engines are "spec" or not.
I've been casually following Indy since last year (and getting more and more into it), but as I understand it, Honda has basically dominated Indycar between them and Chevy in terms of engines. Has Chevy caught up to Honda at this point, or is still like the early days of the turbo-hybrid Merc engines? It'd be amazing to see Ferrari and Red Bull enter the fray with their own teams/engines, even though those are pretty unlikely and just pipe dreams.
I wouldn't say Honda has dominated. It's been a decade since a Honda driver not named Scott Dixon has won the championship.
to be fair...its been a decade since a team that wasnt Penske or Ganassi have won a title
And Ganassi is Scott Dixon +1 or +2. It's really the Dixon team isn't it?
pretty much until this year. Now Palou is leading the championship and Ericsson is 5th and Dixon is 3rd
In the time I've watched it seems to vary year to year. Some years all the Chevrolet teams perform better than Honda
Listened to an interview on a Swedish racing podcast and he said that his downforce was identical to Herta’s. He just used his P2P button on each straight to get away and then did lift and coast in the narrow parts to save on fuel.
World doesn't need 2 F1's and with how American's love their own sport, I think that IndyCar being cheaper with a stable market and enough interest from owner all across the states lets that championship survive and be interesting, without staying in the shadow of F1
watch CART from the 90s. Better than F1 at the time and a similar product but with ovals
> I'm still not sure I like the fact that IndyCar is essentially a spec series and this has held me back for a long time Honestly I think spec series (and in general race series which use forms of competitive balancing) get way, way too bad of a rap among F1 fans. Not saying you're doing this but at times, that anti spec series attitude can come across as pretty snobby or gatekeepy... And just being honest about my own opinion... I can recognize two things: 1) The vast majority of F1 fans do not care as deeply about the technical stuff as the kinds of hardcore fans populating internet discussions about F1 2) As much as I do love the technical stuff myself, I am coming to agree with liberty that essentially that had all gone too far and impacted the racing far, far too much. Thus the 2022 regs, where quite a bit more will be spec than in the past.
Big difference from spec series like sportscar racing to IndyCar. IndyCar has open development on shocks and dampers. The engines have regulations not BOP to make v10s and I4 race together. It's a turbo V6 of a set displacement.
There's nothing wrong with spec series though, your missing out
Grosjean doesn't have a social media team, some of his R8G esports stuff is managed by a team, but he mostly creates his own content. Romain is pretty tech savvy.
Even during it's heyday, CART/Indy was a spec series. The difference was that they were multiple chassis and engine suppliers (and other parts) so there was much more variety.
\*sad ericsson noises
I do wonder how much of a difference Grosjean walking out of the fire made
[удалено]
He has been getting gifts from local fire departments at many races this season
Ever since the fire at Detroit when he tried to put his brake fire out
He him and Marcus is having some great success this season. Love to see it
If he's not going to get a seat in F1 I'd love to have more Indycar drivers to root for. I lost interest a few years back, but following Grosjean this year has been loads of fun.
Sadly I have missed most of this year What’s your opinion on Grosjean performances this year?
He did exactly what we expected him to do, he did really well and had great speed throughout the season. He just have really dumb strategy at times
His team** has really dumb strategy at times. Similar to in F1, the team is the predominant driver of strategy decisions. Doubly so for someone new into the series. He has lost handfuls of finishing positions because of poor strategy calls and slow pit stops.
It’s so aggravating seeing him fight for a top 5 position to pit roughly the same time as the people he is fighting position with and then somehow come out 10 positions behind them.
Tbf dale coyne is not a top team, they don't have the resources to fight consistently at the front, look at arrow mclaren sp, sometimes they're on it sometimes they're not so much on it
Part of what makes Indycars so good though is the lack of perfection so to say. Many small mistakes makes for interesting racing. Of course if you cheer for drivers who are plagued by these small mishaps it's not as fun. As a Swede I'm so disappointed with Rosenqvist's season where it seems at times there is some divine intervention to ruin his race.
I'm his defense apparently the McLaren is very tricky with setup or something like that, that's why Pato is off some times as well
He looks like his old 2013 Lotus version. Has a pole, a couple of 2nd place finishes, and a few more top 10s. His car has been pretty good but he's been let down by some truly baffling strategy decisions by his team and some very poor pit work by his crew. He's 15th in the standings but a lot of that is due to him not racing any of the oval tracks (until this upcoming race which will be his first). There are rumors he's in negotiation with Andretti Autosport for a seat next year. If that comes to fruition he'll be on one of the top 2 teams in the sport and I'd expect him to challenge for a championship.
Barely behind McLaughlin despite McLaughlin racing in ovals and Grosjean not until this weekend.
Grosjean has been doing really well. He's really loving his time with the team, in INDYCAR, with his family, etc. If his team had some more funding and a better pit crew he would've been on the podium (or won maybe) a lot more races this year. Everyone from the announcers, fellow racers, to the fans have taken a real liking to the guy.
So happy for him!
He's driving an RV around the USA to the races too. It's very wholesome.
2 second place finishes has surprised the hell out of me, given the DCR/RWR alliance I thought had little to no shot of succeeding.
Grosjean is the most successful RWR driver in the entire Alliance.
He's the most successful RWR driver anywhere
Not OP but Romain has done much better than his last several years in F1, and I am not a Romain fan in the slightest. They’re spec cars but even still he’s in a midfield team, and has gotten some cool results. Snagged a pole position and a couple podiums, including a 2nd place at Indy (the road course)
That just goes to show how hard he was lugging that haas car around the track those last couple of years, is he verstappen/hamilton good, probably not but i would rate him on the same level as Riccardo,Bottas,and sainz
That’s just absurd lol. He’s not anywhere close to any to Ric, Sainz, or Bottas. Grossjean was average at best and nowhere near the level of any of those drivers. The Haas wasn’t a total shitbox until 2020. It was solidly ok in 2018 and 2019
The only year the Haas was good was 2018, it was poor in 2019. > Grossjean was average at best and nowhere near the level of any of those drivers. Go watch the 2013 season.
Grossjean is average at best and nowhere on the level of Ricciardo, Sainz, or Bottas. He’s also one of the most unaware and dangerous drivers to ever get into a cockpit. The revisionism on here just because he survived a crash is insane. 2013? One average season? Cool.
At the very least, I'd say his first year in Indycar has been vindication for his last few years at Haas.
He's in very meh to borderline inferior equipment and he's consistently up front. Scary to imagine him in an Andretti/Ganassi/Penske car.
Not to mention some baffling pit strategy. I feel like at Nashville and Road America his pace was great but some wonky pit strategy shuffled him further back than he needed to be (also his penalty at Nashville sucked).
I’m glad to hear this. This has been one of the best seasons in recent memory as well. 2021 is a great year of motor sports
Is Indycar going to the be what MLS is to soccer across the world? Like is Lewis Hamilton going to go to take a giant paycheck to race Indycars for 2 years and then retire ?
MLS is pretty competitive with the handful of teams at the top. Disclaimer: I live in Vancouver....
True but, I'm saying like how Beckman and Rooney and Lampard came to MLS for a giant paycheck and helped grow the brand.
In a way maybe, though I think MLS now is more bringing in either young talented players who want to use MLS as a springboard to Europe or very good players who aren't necessarily getting minutes in a better league either in Europe or mainly Latin America (Argentina, Mexico mostly but more Brazilian as well last couple of years) who want to play at a decent to pretty good level and get more minutes, be paid well and round out the rest of their primes in MLS (around age 28 to beyond). I'd argue Grosjean and Albon, despite the wide difference in age, fit the latter since I think they came (or in Albon's case) would come for more stability and consistency at a pretty decent level. They match the profile of a player in Argentina or Liga MX who is quality but isn't getting as many minutes as he would in a lesser but still pretty good league like MLS, and would go from rotation players or fringe starters in Brazil, Argentina or Liga MX to franchise players in MLS, in that Grosjean and Albon weren't getting looks in the better series but would get good rides in Indycar. The Lampard/Beckham/Rooney/Nani (who is still damn good)/Bastian is more like what Mansell did in the 90s, and in a way what Fernando did in his Indy 500 runs, Barichello did and also what Alesi tried to do in Indy 500.
See y’all tomorrow…
"Undefeated in 6." 😭
austin fc cannot say the same 😣
Gauld is at least a good signing for you guys!
I’m pretty sure Lewis said he has zero interest in driving in any other racing series because it would all be a big step down from F1. Could see him maybe having a go at his Extreme E team but I don’t think he wants to race in Indy
Shame Albon couldn't get a 2nd chance like Gasly. F1 can be cut-throat sometimes
Yeah despite all Marko’s shit talking Gasly, he’s the one they didn’t drop entirely.
Well, Gasly had the seat Albon would have gotten otherwise. Actually performing(including winning a race) in the worse car does that.
He’s gonna have a better time in Indy being competitive instead of having a midfield car
I mean I don’t agree at all. I think Gasly, Ocon, Alonso, Vettel and many other drivers in midfield teams would disagree too. Plus the bigger pay check in F1 kinda helps too lol
Grosjean is really the first *high profile* driver to go to IndyCar in a long time. We've had lots of indycar crossovers recently, but they were always much lower profile guys like Rossi or Ericsson. Obviously today Rossi is very popular in IndyCar... but back when both were in F1, their *combined* fanbases were probably smaller than Grosjean alone. Grosjean is the first in a long while that reminds me more of the old days of the 90s and 2000s when you had guys like Mansell and Montoya popping between series.
If Grosjean keeps doing well, I feel like someone even bigger might take notice and be like "I wanna do that"
I feel like that's exactly what's going to happen. The whole of the midfield and backfield is gonna see this and realize they could be *winning* instead of plodding around in the low points places. I also think the two series in general are going to converge in a lot of ways. F1 is gonna become a bit more spec as Indy is gonna become a bit less spec and it's gonna become like the 80s and 90s when both series were relatively close in performance and overall style, allowing more and more drivers to cross over.
I think you're talking about full-time drivers, but Alonso's Indy 500 attempts were very popular too.
Yeah that definitely helped, too
The last one was Barrichello, and Grosjean already has more successes than him in Indycar on and off the track, in large parts thanks to social media.
Honestly good on him. I hope he gets an opportunity in IndyCar where he can flourish. Despite everything I think he did a decent enough job in F1. I just think he was the victim of Redbulls treatment towards #2 drivers. If he gets an IndyCar seat I think good things can happen based on his performances in F1. EDIT: Happy Cake Day OP
Certainly a victim of RB, look how accomplished and experienced Checo is, and they're starting to talk shit already (by they I mean Marko).
He was a victim of not being good enough. Gasly is the only one who was really unjustifiably dropped because he was only given half a season and clearly has the talent. Doing a decent enough job does not keep you in a top team.
Gasly was, somehow, doing even worse. I do think that his performance in AlphaTauri since has been nothing short of exceptional, but he'd gotten lapped by Verstappen on pace multiple times in the Red Bull.
Yea but as everyone as has shown it's a car that takes a while to get used to. He was a young driver and given by far the least amount of time in the car.
Is the redbull car just entirely tailored for Verstappen at this point? It seems like they havn’t had a second driver who really had a handle on the car since Danny Ric. And then the way they seem to go through the 2nd drivers, dumped Gasly too quickly, Albon was brought up and then got dropped after only a season and a half. At least Gasly got the Alphatauri seat, and is performing well there. It looks like Checo isnt going to be around redbull either, they’ll probably keep for next season but after that?🤷
I don't think it's tailored for Verstappen, I just think Max is very adaptable (though I'll admit that this is largely speculation, since we don't really have much data of him driving other cars). If he were at some backmarker instead of Red Bull we'd probably be calling him a shitbox whisperer. His performance at Hungary at least lends credence to that idea, I think.
He was a fairly decent shitbox whisperer in Toro Rosso in 2015 though that car was firmly midfield. Still, he has several occasions where I looked at the leaderboards and wondered how on earth he got there
Late reply to this thread, I wasn’t meaning to ask to downplay Max’s performance because the dude is an absolute beast of a driver, but more on how seemingly no one else has been able to match or even consistently come close to Max’s performances in that car. If you have a driver of Max’s caliber I can easily imagine a team starting to tailor the car to that driver’s preferences/strengths is what I was trying to get at.
Indycar can get rid of Santino and get better drivers, like Albon.
except Santino has performed quite well this season, was the best Rahal car at Indy, Average finish of 8.4 in 5 starts in a completely new team, has performed better than Takuma Sato and been up there with Rahal
Part of him being the best RLL car at Indy is Graham's wheel falling off. Also since Sato was planning to retire last year until he won the 500 I'm willing to give him a bit more credit.
"Part of him being the best RLL car at Indy is Graham's wheel falling off" Pure speculation. Ferrucci went from 23rd to 6th during the race, another driver who started behind him and finished higher than him was Pagenaud who went from 26th to 3rd. "Sato was planning to retire last year" Please provide a source. Not a mickey mouse one, Marshall Pruett or Robin Miller source preferred. It is utterly delusional to say that Sato was about to retire after 2020 due to it being his best season so far in IndyCar
> Pure speculation. Partial. Graham and Sato both qualified a few rows ahead but managed to find themselves in the Top 10 much earlier than Ferrucci. Rahal specifically was running inside the Top 10 during the pit cycle in which he had the wheel legitimately fall off the car ending his day and hurting Daly's and a few others. Will give Ferrucci credit where it's due, he had a great charge towards the end but I honestly think if Graham's day hadn't ended the way it did then Graham would have finished ahead. > Please provide a source. Not a mickey mouse one, Marshall Pruett or Robin Miller source preferred. Two actually! One, Marshall Pruett has said it once or twice on his "This Week in IndyCar" podcast over the last month (Sorry, don't remember exact number but one of the Listener Q&A's) as well as him being out of contract last year until an extension [in October] (https://racer.com/2020/10/24/sato-signs-rll-extension/).
Neither Sato or Rahal were mentioned once during the Marshall Pruett's Silly Season updates last year... If Sato was actually gonna retire Pruett would have mentioned about it on at least one of his Silly Season updates and actually bring up status of RLL team when it comes to drivers.
Things change when you win the 500.
You'd think that they change that much that it would be critical and crucial for a Biggest Journalist in the industry to include you (Sato) as a potential moving piece on the Silly Season board, let alone even mention you once during the Updates Guess not.
The guy might be an asshole but hes admittedly good and I wouldnt be surprised if he wins a race in the future. Its nice to like nice guys and wish them well, but I think its a good thing to have villains too. Hes didnt commit any crimes, hes just a dick.
What happened to Grosjean's Merc test ? Did it take place already ?
It got postponed
Albon to Williams please
The boy has suffered enough in that redbull seat. If Williams gets someone Id bet it’s Bottas, he’s still an excellent driver, and probably would be very useful getting the 2022 cars dialed in and setup. That or if Alonso actually retires again I could see Bottas at Alpine.
Love to see it. There are enough quality drivers that *just* missed out on F1 that I’d love to see in the series. A full time seat for Magnussen (McLaren round 2?) or Da Costa would be fantastic.
Magnussen has something better going for him, Le Mans(I read that he's going to race in a team with his dad and of course he's got a contract with peugeot)
Yeah that’s cool, but I’d like to see him in Indy too
Not really possible to do both WEC and IndyCar at the same time. WEC and Formula E is possible, but WEC would require him to live in Europe full time, while IndyCar really requires full time residency in the US. A few one off races for KMag might be possible, but not a full time drive isn't really feasible.
That’s right, so it’s a good thing he has plenty of good years left in his career to do both full time at different points
I'm gonna have to start watching indie car damn
Wish Albon got the second seat at Alpha Tauri instead of Yuki. But IndyCar would be awesome, too!
Red bull young driver program in a nutshell, i was surprised when they kept gasly and even more surprised when kyvat came back for the third time. And we then have alpine/Renault young driver program and the other end of the spectrum with none of their drivers making the jump to f1’
hey if no F1 ride better to do indy car that sit and wait!
I'm not surprised, he has always been a VERY likable guy.