Grosjean taking run of second places in his stride

All that stands between Romain Grosjean being a five-time race winner and the NTT IndyCar Series’ biggest bridesmaid is 10.1282 seconds.

It was a 4.9510s deficit to race winner Rinus VeeKay at the first Indianapolis Grand Prix in 2021. It was a separation of 1.1142s to Will Power at the second Indy GP that year. It was chasing Josef Newgarden but coming up 1.2869s short last year in Long Beach. The gap shrank on Grosjean’s return to Long Beach last month, but Kyle Kirkwood still managed cross the finish line with a 0.9907s advantage over his teammate. And in the latest installment of the maddening streak that Grosjean wants to end, he was powerless to stop Scott McLaughlin at Barber Motorsports Park and earned yet another second-place result with a 1.7854s difference to the winner.

Combined, Grosjean leads his rivals in the odd category of owning five runner-up finishes without a win.

According to IndyCar statistician Scott Richards, Grosjean isn’t in record-breaking territory at the moment, but he does find himself among an interesting assortment of IndyCar drivers who either wore out the second step on the podium before capturing their first win, or rose as high as that second step before moving away from open-wheel racing.

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More than 100 years ago, Dave Lewis set the standard for placing second, doing so eight incredible times between 1913-1919, prior to winning his first IndyCar race in July of 1919 at the 1.125-mile board track oval in Uniontown, PA.