'I'm not ready to give up' - Grosjean's IndyCar return mission
Romain Grosjean discusses his desire to get back on the IndyCar grid in 2026 and how he's balancing that with his Prema reserve role in an exclusive interview with The Race
Romain Grosjean is on the IndyCar sidelines for 2025 as a Prema Racing reserve driver, but make no mistake: he intends to be racing again next year.
"Definitely I wanted to be on a grid this year, but you don't always control everything, so I think that this is the best opportunity that was available for me and I'm very glad I took it," Grosjean tells The Race IndyCar Podcast in an exclusive interview before this month's Grand Prix of Long Beach.
“Of course, I would love to talk to you as a racer at Long Beach, but I'm not saying that I'm not going to be back in the future, so I'm excited to be here.
“I'm excited to be involved in the championship. I think it's important to stay on top of what's happening. Of course, you're not driving, but you can see a lot of what's going on and where the series is going and what's happening and I still think that IndyCar has got a big development ahead of itself.
"So, having that in mind being on the sideline for now, the spare quarterback as you would say, and then we're going to be actively working on getting back as a primary quarterback."
You may be familiar with how Grosjean's IndyCar career played out. He got his debut with Dale Coyne in 2021 after his life-changing and fiery crash at Bahrain in Formula 1 the previous year.
His three podiums and a pole that year earned him a big move to Andretti, which was tough as he adapted to its set-up in 2022 but looked poised to pay off in 2023 before his year began to fall apart around May and he ultimately left - with arbitration proceedings against Andretti in his wake - and moved to Juncos Hollinger where he got one season and 17th in the standings, failing to secure the seat there this year.
Instead, Conor Daly and Sting Ray Robb filled that JHR line-up.
Prema is new to IndyCar this year and while Long Beach, round three of the season, was the first race Grosjean was on site for, it's clear he's helped the team with plenty of advice.
But how does he balance that with knowing he could be racing against this team and/or its drivers Robert Shwartzman and Callum Ilott next season. How does he balance giving away his secrets versus what that could mean for his future competitiveness?
"I don't know if it's the US or if it's me getting older, I actually don't mind sharing my secrets because, it's what I'm here for and then if they're better than me, so be it!" Grosjean laughs. He's clearly really at ease and trying to take the positives from this new experience.
"But I like that in the US, it's a level playing field and everyone has the same car in theory. OK, the dampers are a big thing, but it's very different from Europe in that aspect [that the cars are equal] and I'm more than happy to share anything I know.
"I'll be on a simulator on Monday [April 14] and I'm going to help them as if I was in the car next race."
He should be in a car next race. Whatever your opinion of Grosjean, he's far too good to be an IndyCar reserve. The fact he's taken that on when a lot of drivers of his calibre might have rejected it in hysterics, offended, shows what he's willing to sacrifice to get back on the grid.
A lot of that is because he really, clearly, loves IndyCar.
"Absolutely," he replies when asked if IndyCar is the main championship he wants to compete in right now as opposed to switching his focus elsewhere, bearing in mind he is already competing in the IMSA SportsCar Championship with Lamborghini.
"I really enjoy the balance that you can have in the US doing IndyCar and the endurance races in IMSA. It's not been a great season on that aspect [for Lamborghini, as the car has been slow and unreliable], but I still absolutely love the endurance championship, but I've got to say that the selfish me also wants to not share the car with anyone, so that's why I think the balance between the two championships is outstanding.
"IndyCar is a very complicated championship. It's very challenging, very competitive, and I still haven't given up on getting wins."
The other thing this period has done is allowed Grosjean to take a step back and evaluate his life from all angles at the track and away from it, without the grind of going from race to race each week as he has done for the past 16 years or more.
Being a reserve can send some drivers mad, but he says it "hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be".
"It also made me realise that there is a life after racing," he adds.
"I'm closer to the end than the beginning. It's good to also be home and to know and realise that there's actually other opportunities in life and other challenges, other races that are different, businesses and so on.
"But right now I'm not ready to put my helmet on the shelf. I still want to go racing, but taking a bit of a step back has actually been interesting to realise that, I miss it and I'm not ready to give up yet.
"The day I decide that I'm done racing, it's not going to be an empty hole. There's going to be plenty."
Despite the poor performance of the Lamborghini prototype in IMSA, Grosjean has still managed to excel in it and deliver some stints that shows he still has a lot left to offer.
At the moment it's Prema benefitting from that, but in the future, who knows?
Things start to happen in the driver market in May, and Grosjean could easily be on the grid again in 2026. Much stranger things have happened in IndyCar's driver market.
Listen to the interview with Grosjean in full on The Race IndyCar Podcast here.
Prema in IndyCar so far
Grosjean reckons Prema is "probably the most professional environment that I've seen in IndyCar so far".
The drivers are a key part of that and Robert Shwartzman has been the star of the show so far and is IndyCar's top rookie in 2025 after three races, although the whole of that class has had major issues and it's Louis Foster who has had the best outright pace of the group, albeit in the established Rahal Letterman Lanigan team.
Shwartzman did the whole first race weekend in St Petersburg without a radio - in his first ever IndyCar race - came back from basically no practice laps to finish 22nd at Thermal and then took its best result so far with 18th in Long Beach.
Ilott's had his fair share of issues so far, and has been doing a lot of the team's experimentation, but there have been flashes of pace in both cars which shows that any recommendation to delay starting the IndyCar season for this team would have been silly. Even Ilott's disappointing start in terms of results has him two places above bottom of the standings after three events.
Keep in mind, this team was started from nothing, without the technical help of another team. And it's had top 10 race fastest laps in two of the three events so far.
Pitstops and procedural items have been hit and miss, but generally the team has brought a relatively competitive car to each race despite only a handful of test days, and Long Beach was relatively error free in all departments.
"It's only race three of the season and then you're limited in testing and, it was the winter as well in the US, so there's plenty of places you cannot go test. So for sure there is some time that it's going to take, but I see a huge potential," adds Grosjean.
