Vips’s road to redemption starts with RLL

Juri Vips spoke a word in a public forum that didn’t belong to him. The full measure of the Estonian’s ignorance was presented while gaming in June of 2022 on Twitch, the popular live streaming platform.

Vips paid a heavy price for using the N-word. Cut by Red Bull, the then-22-year-old lost the energy drink company’s support and his place on its prized Red Bull Junior Team. He also became Public Enemy No. 1 for many on social media and was cancelled in an instant. Vips’ dreams of reaching Formula 1 were forfeited that day on Twitch.

His Hitech Grand Prix Formula 2 team kept him in the car for the rest of the season, but after finishing sixth in the championship as a rookie, falling to 11^th in the standings as an embattled sophomore had a devastating effect on his career.

If the absence of Red Bull’s funding wasn’t enough of a blow to his prospects, being deemed a racist ensured Vips was all but untouchable, a toxic character that no team would want associated with its name or aligned with its sponsors. And then Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing entered the conversation.

With no opportunities to advance his career in Europe, Vips turned to America, birthplace of the word that brought his upward trajectory in F1 to an end. His friend Christian Lundgaard, another F2 graduate, was doing big things at RLL, and with an invitation to test for the IndyCar team, Vips demonstrated impressive speed and feedback that piqued the organization’s interest. Another chance to test emerged, and once again, Vips made a strong impression with the Indiana-based squad.

Just as NASCAR’s Kyle Larson found, after his use of the same word while gaming upended his life and stalled his career, time and education helped Vips to put some serious distance between the dumbest day of his life and where he stands now as RLL’s newest IndyCar driver. That time and distance, however, doesn’t change the fact that Vips is bringing a lot of heat — the wrong kind of heat— with him to RLL.

Team co-owner Bobby Rahal doesn’t want to write Vips off, which is exactly why he and Mike Lanigan and David Letterman have embraced Vips, who’s now one year older – he  turned 23 earlier this month — and says he’s much wiser than the version of himself who set fire to his future. He’s fortunate to have the backing of those who don’t focus on external input or influences while choosing their drivers.

Speaking to Vips on Monday, I asked who IndyCar fans will meet when he arrives in Portland later this week to drive the No. 30 Honda alongside Lundgaard and RLL stablemate Graham Rahal, and this is what he said.

“After everything happened last year, I asked my team at the time, Hitech, to do some kind of course for me to understand what’s offensive and what’s not because I made this huge mistake without knowing it’s such a big mistake. I thought it was just a swear word that I was saying,” Vips said.

Kyle Larson earned the chance to reboot his NASCAR career after using the same slur, under the same circumstances, as the one that led to Vips being dropped by Red Bull. Nigel Kinrade/Motorsport Images

“I wanted to know more about it, first of all, just so nothing like this can ever happen again because I don’t know what else I don’t know. I had a lot of time to reflect on who I disappointed. I had so many fans, so many people cheering for me, so many people that helped me through my career, and I just threw it all away. Because before this, I wasn’t interested in learning about anything. All I cared about was racing.

“That’s why I thought the word that I said was a swear word and not way worse than it actually is. Since then, I’ve learned a lot.”

Acts of remorse and contrition are often needed for transgressors like Vips to be forgiven. But for some of those who cancelled Vips, or who’ve had that word fired at them by people who look like Vips, claiming to be unaware of the word’s etymology and taking sensitivity courses isn’t enough to be freed from societal exile. And for those who don’t care, RLL’s signing of Vips is much ado about nothing, but the team knew it would not be universally embraced.

Fully aware of the backlash that was awaiting Vips’ announcement as its driver for Portland and the season finale in Monterey, RLL turned off the ability for users of X — formerly known as Twitter — to comment on the post. The act itself spoke volumes about the situation RLL knowingly entered into with Vips, and while direct commenting on the team’s post can’t be made, it hasn’t stopped the comments from being posted elsewhere, or the calls from coming in from members of the racing community who are unimpressed by RLL’s decision.

There are plenty of young drivers who are just as talented as Vips, and just as unemployed, who haven’t used that word. As one friend asked, “This is the best guy for the job they could get? What makes them put him higher on the list than the other ones?”