Grosjean and McLaughlin battled for the St. Pete win and both lost. Barber was different.
Romain Grosjean could’ve snatched the microphone out of Dave Burns’ hands and interviewed himself. He knows the script, and it’s getting old. The interviewer touts Grosjean's ‘incredible consistency’ on pitlane after a fifth 2nd-place finish in IndyCar without a win, and then laments that consistency wasn’t what was needed.
Grosjean offers half a smile, laughs to himself and pauses for just a moment to pick the proper words for one of IndyCar’s most honest drivers on a day that, should he end this season hoisting the Astor Cup, he’ll undoubtedly hang his hat on, but a day that, in the moment, is like another knife to the chest.
“It hurts, I’m gonna be honest,” said Sunday’s polesitter, who led 57 of the 90 laps at Barber Motorsport Park but lost the lead twice to the eventual winner, Scott McLaughlin. Grosjean managed to pass the Kiwi back twice, until what boiled down to a pre-race strategy call handed McLaughlin all the cards. “Three stops never wins at Barber, but today, the pits stayed open, and it gave McLaughlin and (Will) Power the edge on the three-stop. We had an incredible car, drove really well, gave 100% but we just got unlucky with a yellow.
“It’s probably the most frustrating type of racing. You know you can go faster. You want to keep the throttle pinned, but you can’t. Out of 90 laps, I think I did three laps where I was flat-out, and that’s it. The rest, I had to lift and coast to save fuel. It’s a strategy call we decided as a team before the race, and we thought we could win with it, but obviously not.”
Grosjean, Olivier Boisson, lead engineer on the No. 29 Andretti Autosport Honda, and strategist Michael Andretti did their homework. Though drivers making three stops have technically won during IndyCar’s 12 previous stops at Barber, they haven't when the field was so evenly split between the two strategies. In three previous Barber races, the field was completely split between three or four stops, and the lesser number won out. Three other times, the winner made three stops, and just a single contending driver attempted (and failed) to win it on two. Outside the chaotic, rain-delayed and shortened 2018 race, the victor in the other five events on the 2.3-mile natural-terrain road course just outside Birmingham, Ala. has come from the pool who’ve traded slower pace for less time spent on pitlane.
The road ahead: IndyCar strikes multi-year extension to secure Barber Motorsports Park race through 2027
IndyCar calculated drivers on three stops had just a 9% chance at coming out on top Sunday.
“I think when your team boss comes to see you and says, ‘That’s probably the best drive I’ve seen in an Indy car,' and he’s been around for a long time, you take that as a win,” Grosjean said.
If only he could.
The result of 'a happy driver strategy'
On the other end of that 9% was a driver starting new traditions in Victory Lane and giving shoutouts and warm wishes to his parents and wife. McLaughlin, who evolved from a dark horse title contender into an Astor Cup favorite over this six-month offseason, had been painfully, anxiously waiting for something to go right after a three-win, breakout campaign a year ago.
His results at Texas and Long Beach, a pair of top-10s in 6th and 10th, look just fine, but in both clean races, he never really had the pace and had been relatively invisible over this last month – which had followed a very visible, frustrating, perhaps embarrassing gaffe while defending his lead midway through the season-opener at St. Pete. There, McLaughlin rode his cold tires too far into Turn 4 while coming out of the pits with an eager Grosjean on the outside line. just a nose ahead.
Knowing if he lifted, he’d in all likelihood never get another shot, McLaughlin held onto hope a fraction too long, and knocked wheels with Grosjean, sending them both into the wall and the Andretti driver into a bird-flipping, tire-banging, four-letter-word tirade. With cooler heads, the pair smiled and back-slapped post-race, but there was always going to be an undercurrent of wonder when they met again on-track with a race-win on the line.
For good measure, they did so twice Sunday.
A winning strategy: Here's how Scott McLaughlin battled Romain Grosjean for IndyCar win
Sting Ray Robb’s No. 51 Honda answered the prayers of several three-stopper crew chiefs on Lap 38 Sunday, where due to a yet-to-be determined mechanical failure, the Dale Coyne Racing rookie slowed to a stop off-course near Turn 9 when a caution couldn’t have helped McLaughlin and company anymore. To Grosjean’s disdain, IndyCar race control (following a policy they’ve routinely used for several years now) opted not to immediately throw what was obviously going to be a yellow flag immediately, instead allowing each car to pass the pitlane entrance once to give the full field the opportunity to not get hosed by virtue of a caution falling precisely when they needed to pit.
Nearing the end of their second stint, the front-running three-stoppers dove in, and then blended back into the pack. Though with different tire lives and amounts of fuel in their tanks, the entire field would need just one more stop to make it to the checkered flag once the green flag flew again on Lap 42.
And now, Grosjean had snatched the lead back that he’d lost after his pitstop on Lap 30, but he had a hard-charging McLaughlin right on his gearbox.
“I call that a ‘happy driver strategy,’” McLaughlin said in Victory Lane of his advantage battling late with the runner-up Grosjean. “That’s probably the most complete race I’ve ever driven in an Indy car, to be honest.
“But I knew that if I hit (Grosjean) this time, it would be bad. I thought we were racing just like we normally do – clean. I knew it was going to be hard passing him, so it was just a matter of me biding my time. You’ve got to ... take the risk where you need to and learn from your mistakes. We’ll race each other to every bit of the track and use each other up when we need to, but that’s just part of it, and that’s why I enjoy racing Romain.”
A little give-and-take
Eerily similar to St. Pete, Grosjean found himself tearing down the front-straight, feet to the floor, one eye ahead and one glancing left and wondering just when McLaughlin was going to get spit out of the pits. Like St. Pete, it was McLaughlin again on cold tires on Lap 64 and the furious Phoenix plotting where he’d make his move. Three races ago, the option was plain and simple: Turn 4 is where you get your work done and assert your advantage if you have it.
But on the rollercoaster that is the undulating purpose-built motorcycle track in rural Alabama, Grosjean’s options were more varied. He waited in Turn 5, the hairpin where he famously banged wheels with Graham Rahal and started a month-long public feud, glanced at it through Turns 8 and 9 and then pointedly dove inside through 13 and 14. Smartly, McLaughlin moved to defend the inside line, playing right into Grosjean’s hands. He swung outside and held it coming around the sweeping Turn 14-15-16 complex, and then rode that inside when Turn 17 swung almost 90 degrees left.
“I thought my only option was to go on the outside, roll some speed and see if the grip was there – and it was. I managed to get side-by-side in the apex, but it’s actually quite funny. Scott told me on the podium that last year, I got him at that same spot,” Grosjean said. “Next year, I probably won’t get him there if he’s in front.”
As McLaughlin said post-race, the Andretti driver caught him “napping.”
“I think we touched a little when he passed me but it was fair,” said McLaughlin of the move. “He’s got a never-give-up attitude, and I think that’s why he was in F1 for so long and why he’s come over here and been so successful. You’re going to have a hard battle with him, but it’s give-and-take. You give him nothing, and he’ll give you nothing.
“But I really enjoy racing him. There’s no hard feelings. We’ve had good battles, and I actually really enjoyed the battle today, but that’s probably because I came out on top.”
McLaughlin held relatively tight in 2nd. He’d pull within a couple tenths and then fall back beyond 1 second of the leader. Again, he climbed within a half-second, and then in the laps before Grosjean pitted, he extended what eventually became a 2.6-second lead over the Team Penske driver.
It all meant that 10 laps later, having coughed up the lead and ready to take it back with 20 to go, he still had the fuel advantage, and Grosjean had been forced to burn up all his 200 seconds of push-to-pass boost in a way that had him scratching his head post-race and all but blaming it on a cockpit malfunction.
“I went and pressured him a bit with what I had up my sleeve, and that’s what helped me pass him the way I did. I got a run (into the Turn 5 hairpin), and the way I hurried through to Turn 8, that was purely on push-to-pass,” McLaughlin said “I knew he wasn’t going to pass me into Turn 8, and if he did, he was going to probably crash me – and I just sorta hoped to God he wouldn’t do that.
“I was annoyed I’d cost myself, maybe a little just cruising and saving fuel and driving to my own (fuel) number, but ultimately it made the race win that much more satisfying by passing for the lead after getting passed in that exchange.”
Grosjean called the masterclass his challenger put together a ‘perfect race’ with nothing left to second-guess than the strategy his whole day had been built around. And given how things are rolling within the No. 28 crew – a ‘woulda-coulda-shoulda’ near-win (St. Pete), a certain top-5 if not for dirty air with two laps to go (Texas) and a runner-up where, in hindsight, he knows now he could’ve pushed his teammate harder to the checkered flag (Long Beach) – it’s hard to second-guess.
“You control what you can control, and that’s what we did. We executed very well this weekend. We had the fast car that put us on pole and were 20 seconds ahead of the other two-stoppers at the finish. That shows how fast we are. We just didn’t have the right strategy,” Grosjean said. “I’d say that’s not too bad. That puts me 4th in the championship. Big picture? Yes, I wanted to win, today, and it hurts not to do it. But we’ve got a lot more occasions. Maybe I can win Indy (on the road course) and then the 500? That would be good.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Inside Romain Grosjean, Scott McLaughlin's Barber battle
