“We’ve been speaking with him for over a year”– Romain Grosjean is encouraging Alex Albon to join IndyCar

“We’ve been speaking with him for over a year”– Romain Grosjean admits he has instilled an interest in Alex Albon to join IndyCar.

Romain Grosjean started his trade in IndyCar after leaving Formula 1 at the end of last year, and so far, he is gaining a fair amount of success in the United States.

Seeing his pleasant time in IndyCar, Dale Coyne, his boss, has revealed that the Frenchman has been in touch with Red Bull’s prodigy Alex Albon to join him in his team, who is currently competing in DTM this year after facing a demotion in Red Bull.

😉😃 @alex_albon https://t.co/ICN85gjqcQ

— Romain Grosjean (@RGrosjean) August 16, 2021

“Alex was talking to lots of people,” Coyne told Autosport. “He’s been on our radar for a while, and we’ve been speaking with him for over a year now, and he’s interested, for sure.

“Romain is a great salesman for us, showing what we can do as a team, but he’s also the best salesman for IndyCar. He and Alex talked together for quite a while.

“They talked about how nice it is in the series, how competitive you can be in these cars, what they’re like to drive – natural, instinctive, so you can get on it straight away as we saw from [Christian] Lundgaard.

It’s easier in IndyCar

Coyne further revealed that Grosjean had informed Albon about the different environments in the IndyCar in comparison to F1, where many believe Albon became a victim of poor man-management.

“Romain was telling him it was fun to be in IndyCar, a lot of less pressure, better relationships between teams, team owners, and between drivers.”

“I think Alex appreciates that the teams here aren’t set up to have one guy as number one and the other as the bridesmaid. That’s something Alex has been through, right?”

“It’s different here. If your two guys have two different driving styles, you can generally change each car to suit its driver. Now, that might hurt a bit if they’re very different [as] their feedback isn’t going to help the other one so much.”

“There’s more work and one driving style and engineering philosophy may suit a track better than the other. But if having them on different setups helps get the best out of each driver individually, then you can do that in IndyCar. We’ve had it that way before, we think we’re pretty good at it and it can work out well.”

“So anyway, I think if they’re used to the pressure of Formula 3, 2 and especially Formula 1, drivers find IndyCar a breath of fresh air. The hard work is what’s done on track, in pit lane and in the engineering trailer. There’s not the politicking and pressure.”

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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