Grosjean: There is more to come, despite fast pace in Texas

Although he raced at Gateway’s World Wide Technology Raceway last August, ex-Formula 1 driver Grosjean is only committing to the full NTT IndyCar Series in 2022, his second year in U.S. open-wheel racing, and his first with Andretti Autosport-Honda.

In yesterday’s six-car test for oval rookies, Grosjean topped the speed chart for laps run without the aid of a tow, during the course of a 152 laps of the 1.5-mile TMS.

He told Motorsport.com: “It was a busy test program but we managed to get through everything. The temperature was pretty decent [80degF], we did some group running, it was a good day.

“At the start of the day, we had the car on the nose, a bit too much CoP [center of pressure], but it was interesting actually, to remove the front flap and see what it does to the handling of the car. We tried various things and we now know the direction we don’t want to go!

“I guess that’s a positive and now we’re just going to fine tune the setup options that we preferred. We did three attempts at quali sims which were decent, and our lap times were very consistent over the two laps.

“I feel like there is more we can extract though, because we are still a little bit conservative setup-wise… but that’s better than the other way.”

Grosjean said that he felt he’d fine-tuned his sensitivity so he could feel the fractional slipping of the outside tires on light downforce.

“It’s quite interesting because on new tires for a two-lap qualifying simulation, you can be flat both laps and one lap is going to be slower than the other one and you have to understand why. It’s a bit of sliding, a bit of this, a bit of that… There is a lot of finesse required and that’s very interesting.”

Unlike some oval rookies, especially those with road course backgrounds, Grosjean grew to prefer driving with some right-hand steering lock for the straights, so that the driver straightens the steering for the banked turns.

“Yes, I do like it that way,” he said. “We made that change during the day – to fight it, feel like you’re turning right when you’re in a straight line, and then center the wheel for the turns.”

However, he admitted the slowed-down steering rack for ovals meant entering the pitbox was difficult compared with road and street courses, and there are plenty of things to remember on pitlane.

“It is quite something to get into the pitbox, with the left-front wheel locking very easily, and the slow steering as you said,” he remarked. “It’s about getting used to the ‘toys’ in the cockpit – putting the front bar soft, the rear bar stiff and adjusting the weight jacker. And then making sure you remember to reverse all that after you leave the box! It is very busy.”

Grosjean impressed everyone with his run to 14^th on his oval race debut at WWTR in the Dale Coyne Racing-Honda last summer, for he made several bold passes on series veterans, and his ultimate finishing position was only hurt by an unfortunately timed caution period, and a switch in strategy. But he doesn’t foresee a similar number of overtaking opportunities arising in Texas for the second round of the 2022 season this month, due to the PJ1 surface treatment used at TMS. Although it is said to offer more grip in the turns for NASCAR’s Goodyear rubber, it kills grip on IndyCar’s Firestones, and Grosjean says that will be more detrimental to the quality of the racing than the traditional issues of ‘dirty air’.

“I think the biggest problem in Texas – and I know I’m very new to ovals – is the black strips on the circuit, which completely kills it, reduces you to just one line,” he said. “Of course in the dirty air, you lose downforce – that’s what happens with aero cars. But the problem is you can’t really run a bit higher line or a bit lower line because of those patches, so… it’s not as much fun as it could be, put it that way.

“We did some group running but the car that was in front would stick to the front. We could still go back-and-forth, back-and-forth, because of the draft of four or five cars in front. But no one was passing.”

To that point, qualifying will take on far more importance in Texas, so Grosjean agreed that it was “very good, very encouraging” that the four Honda cars outpaced the two Chevrolets.