Opinion: Charles Bradley

Romain Grosjean is discovering in Indycar that top-level motorsport is far from incompatible with a chilled, friendly, barbecue-washed-down-with-a-beer lifestyle

“Ideally, when I finish a race I go and eat a good burger – I can go for it! Life is great”

Romain Grosjean has a broad smile upon his face as he greets me warmly outside the Dale Coyne Racing with RWR hauler at St Petersburg.“hello mate, I just did my washing before you arrived,” he grins, racesuit now dangling to dry before Indycar qualifying.“i didn’t have to do that in F1!”

It’s a stark contrast from the pampered world he used to inhabit, as well as his frustrated demeanour of the past few seasons with Haas, where he scrabbled around putting it all on the line for just a handful of points.

“Formula 1 stays Formula 1,”he says.“i don’t regret spending 10 years there and I know I was very lucky to do what I did. But, coming here, the beauty of Indycar is that it’s so competitive. I don’t think I’ve been this happy for a very long time.”

Only four months on from the devastating fiery crash that marked an early end to his F1 career, it’s not just the“glad to be alive”sentiment that overrides our conversation, but also his enthusiasm for the new opportunity and environment.

Of course, Haas was far from the biggest team on the F1 grid, yet the Coyne squad’s size is a tiny fraction of that, and its familylike vibe has added to that“breath of fresh air”he needed. Later, as I snap a photo of his car in the line before qualifying, one of his mechanics – with a rag in hand – wisecracks:“y’know, no matter how hard I polish his car, he always brings it back dirty!”

The harmless quip made me think of the car he didn’t bring back from the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix, which was left in two semi-large pieces and several hundred small ones. Having faced – and swerved – death in a racing car, it says a lot about Grosjean’s passion for driving that he’s returned to action so soon. Not only that, but with an incredibly positive attitude about an accident that would floor many.

“That crash, in the end, it was a positive thing in my life,” he states.“yes, my hand is painful and it’s not good looking – I forgot to tape it this morning [in second practice] and I feel so much pain right now! But, at the end, it made me realise that life is beautiful, how lucky I am to have my three kids and my wife. Every day is a bonus.”

I can see why he’s enjoying this new life after F1, and his enthusiasm reminds me very much of the rising teenaged star that I first met in 2006 when I covered the F3 Euro

Series for Autosport.

Around that time, I used to join the young French Federation-backed drivers on their fitness camps in

Dubai, nominally to interview them in English to help their media development, although mostly it was lounging around by the swimming pool with team captain Jean Alesi and shouting encouragement and/or giggling as they flogged themselves into a sweaty mess.

Romain was always very much the‘leader of the gang’ on these trips – for example, kissing a camel for a dare!

Freed from the stifling F1 paddock, endless debriefs plus constant media and sponsor demands, the laid-back Indycar Series is very much an atmosphere that suits him.

“Obviously I take this very seriously,”he says of his new Stateside career.“but if I want a beer in the evening before race day, I’ll have one now. I enjoy my life. I have a good barbecue,

I get some chill time in the evening, go to sleep, then I wake up on race day and focus, then it’s boom, boom, boom.

“I’m still quite fit – I think I burn more calories driving an Indycar than I ever did in F1. Ideally, when I finish a race

I go and eat a good burger – I can go for it! Life is great. I’m enjoying it as much as I can as a human being. I’m lucky to be doing what I love the most.

“It’s a lot of fresh air for me. OK, it’s not Formula 1 where one driver is paid $50million a year – you could run all the Indycars here inside the budget for one F1 team. But the racing is really good, and there’s a nice atmosphere between the drivers. And you get out on track and [he rubs his hands together] let’s do it!”

As well as his own integration into the US lifestyle, Grosjean has been introducing his family to it. A lengthy pre-season road trip along the east coast of Florida with the wife and kids before the season opener was a huge success, and perhaps one day they’ll make the move as a collective if his ambitions to become a full-time driver in the States work out.

Of course, if that’s as an Indycar driver, that would have to include superspeedway racing. And that’s currently off the agenda.“if I was 25 and didn’t have kids, no problem,” he says.“the thing that’s difficult for now is that my family is far away. If anything happens, that’s a big one… and they are sitting 10 hours’flight time away.

“They saw what happened in Bahrain, and for 2m43s they didn’t know if they still had a father or husband. I can’t put them in that situation. So, it’s not for me, it’s for them.”