Grosjean: 'Mentality' of F1 Will Be Biggest Challenge for Next IndyCar Driver in Formula 1

• Romain Grosjean finished 15th in the 2021 NTT IndyCar standings in his rookie year, including earning three podiums and one pole.

• His sophomore season in the series, and his first with Andretti Autosport, has been challenging, to say the least.

• When asked about the differences between F1 and IndyCar, Grosjean immediately pointed to one thing.

It hasn’t exactly been the year Romain Grosjean envisioned when he moved to Andretti Autosport for the 2022 IndyCar season.

After spending 2021, his first year in IndyCar, with Dale Coyne Racing, the Swiss-French former Formula 1 driver took over the No. 28 DHL Honda from Ryan Hunter-Reay, whose contract was not renewed after last season.

Grosjean finished 15th in the standings in his rookie year, including earning three podiums and one pole. But his sophomore season in the series, and his first with Andretti, has been challenging, to say the least.

He comes into this weekend’s race at Toronto 14th in the standings, with just one podium thus far (second at Long Beach). There’s no question Grosjean has struggled with finishes of 17th or worse in five of the first nine races and just four finishes ending on the lead lap.

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Yet while Grosjean still has a chance at cracking the top 10 by the end of this season, he and his team are also looking and working ahead.

“Where we are right now is to focus on preparing for 2023,” Grosjean told Autoweek. “We've had to adjust to the new team. I believe the task is different from last year, and that's something we’ve had to adjust to.

“We have not had exactly the performance that we wanted to, to be 100% honest. So we've been working hard on the car. I feel like now we're getting somewhere with Olivier (Boisson), my engineer. We made some really good progress in Mid-Ohio and on the simulators we've done. So I'm kind of excited about that, that we’ve got somewhere. But we had to change a lot of the philosophy from what we used to run because we just feel like the car is a little bit different.”

Still, the transition from Coyne to Andretti “has been smooth,” Grosjean said. “The team has been really good at welcoming me and making us feel at home. So that's been pretty good. The car is a little bit different this year, at least I feel that they are, and we’ve had to adjust, to change a few things that has taken a little bit of time. But we're going somewhere that I'm happy with and excited that we’ve get so many races coming and we can try to do something cool.”

While Grosjean has 183 points thus far this season, he still is 138 points behind series leader and Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson. However, Grosjean is only 29 points out of the top 10 (Colton Herta is 10th with 212 points).

“What I'm going to do is to try to go race by race and do the best we can and see where that brings us later in the year,” Grosejan said. “But yeah, I think we’re a little too far behind yet to think about any good position.

“So we're just about focusing every weekend on what we can do, try to do the best, and when we’re at Laguna Seca (the season finale), we'll look where we are. But realistically, I think there's very little chance to go for a championship.”

While IndyCar has eight races left on the schedule, the next five are likely to be brutal, the quintet of events coming within a 22-day span: July 17 (Toronto), July 23-24 (weekend doubleheader at Iowa), July 30 (Indianapolis road course), and August 7 (Nashville).

“It's going to be quite something with all the races that we have until Laguna Seca,” Grosjean said. “I think it's exciting that we get to race so many weekends in a row, but also it's going to be tiring.