From Go-Karts to Grand Prix: The Calculated Risks of Racing with Romain Grosjean
What does it take to strap into a ground-level rocket, hurtling around a track at over 200 miles per hour?
In the latest episode, hosts Sandy and Sandra sit down with international racing star Romain Grosjean. From his early days in European go-karting to reaching the absolute pinnacle of motorsport in Formula 1, and now conquering the gritty, high-speed tracks of the NTT IndyCar Series, Grosjean unpacks the physical, mental, and technological demands of being a world-class race car driver.
Here is a look at some of the highlights from Sandy and Sandra's thrilling conversation with "The Phoenix" himself.
From the Slopes to the Track
Listeners might be surprised to learn that Grosjean’s high-speed pursuits didn't start with an engine. With a grandfather who was a vice-world champion skier, Romain was initially destined for the slopes. However, after his father pulled him from skiing due to safety concerns and doping controversies in the sport, Romain turned to BMX. A few concussions later, his mother suggested he find yet another hobby. Enter go-karting. Growing up in Switzerland, right near the French border, Romain began frequenting a local track and quickly realized he wasn't just fast - he was the fastest kid there. That realization ignited a spectacular 26-year career in motorsport.
F1 vs. IndyCar: A Tale of Two Machines
Having spent a decade in Formula 1 before transitioning to the American IndyCar series and endurance racing, Grosjean has a unique perspective on the world’s two most prominent open-wheel series. He likens the technology gap to comparing an Airbus A380 to a classic DC-3.
The Physical Toll: F1 cars feature power steering, but the extreme downforce subjects drivers to a staggering 5.5 to 7 Gs in corners and braking zones. “It’s just being like in a washing machine,” Grosjean explains to the hosts. IndyCar, on the other hand, lacks power steering and runs on bumpier tracks, making it a much more muscular, upper-body workout.
The Strategy: In F1, almost everything is pre-simulated. Computers run thousands of scenarios a minute based on tire degradation and track temps, effectively mapping out the race before the lights go out. IndyCar is far more dynamic. With a limited 18-gallon fuel tank and pits that close during yellow flags, drivers have to make split-second strategic calls, constantly calculating if they have enough fuel to make it to the end.
Trusting the "Butt Sensor"
As a former F-14 Tomcat pilot, Sandy noted that instruments in a fighter jet are always lagging just a millisecond behind reality - meaning pilots have to fly by the seat of their pants. Romain enthusiastically agreed that racing is exactly the same. Long before the steering wheel telemetry tells him he's losing grip, his body feels it. He calls it having a highly tuned "butt sensor," relying on physical sensation and intuition to master the vehicle.
The Ultimate Test of Survival: Bahrain 2020
It is impossible to talk about Grosjean's career without bringing up the horrific, fiery crash at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix. After piercing a metal guardrail at over 130 mph, his car was torn in half and engulfed in flames. For 28 harrowing seconds, Grosjean fought to free himself from the wreckage, driven by the intense desire to survive for his wife and children.
When Sandy asks about his mindset in that moment, Grosjean explains that a person never truly knows if they have a survival instinct until they are forced to use it. Remarkably, Grosjean's first thought from his hospital bed was figuring out how to race the following weekend. Though his doctors eventually grounded him to save his badly burned hands, his commitment to getting back behind the wheel never wavered.
Endurance Racing and the Truth About Drivers
Sandra also asked Grosjean about his recent foray into endurance racing, including the grueling Rolex 24 at Daytona. Unlike the solo nature of F1 or IndyCar, Sandra notes the distinct culture shift. Grosjean agrees, explaining that endurance racing is all about compromise. Drivers share the car, adjusting to setups that might not perfectly suit their individual driving styles, all while managing sleep deprivation between intense 55-minute driving stints.
As the episode winds down, Sandra asks what the general public gets wrong about race car drivers. Grosjean is quick to set the record straight: they aren't crazy. While the speeds are incredibly high, every move is calculated, the cars are engineered for extreme forces, and the tracks are designed for safety. In fact, he jokes to the hosts that the real crazy drivers are the everyday commuters on American highways.
A Stroke of Podcast Luck
Looking ahead, Grosjean is staring down a grueling schedule with 18 IndyCar races and nine F1 broadcast appearances, taking him everywhere from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Baku and Madrid. But before they sign off, Sandy leaves him with a promising superstition: The last time The Adrenaline Zone interviewed an IndyCar driver - Josef Newgarden - he went on to win the Indy 500 twice.
Grosjean happily accepts the good omen, proving that while racing is all about calculated risk and extreme skill, a little bit of luck never hurts.
Transcript
Romain Grosjean:
You would never know if you have a survival instinct or not until you discover that you have one. And I think I do.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
One of the most popular movies of 2025 was F1, the thrilling depiction of F1 racing starring Brad Pitt.
Sandy Winnefeld:
As I discovered during the filming and after the filming of the first Top Gun movie starring Tom Cruise, summer movies like this have to dramatize certain aspects of their subject, but they still sometimes retain a grain of truth. So we were curious about how the film F1 might have followed that trend. We were lucky to be connected by a friend to French racer Romain Grosjean. Romain has driven in nearly every possible type of motor racing, including 179 Grand Prix starts.
Romain Grosjean:
I did my private pilot license back in 2022 or 2023, and the instructors were like, "Have you flown an aircraft before?" I said, "No, but it feels like a race car, you know, just it moves around and I know what to do." So unusual attitudes, they would try to put you anywhere and say, "Yeah, we are here and here and here. How do you know?" "Well, I just feel it." Right.
Sandy Winnefeld:
And he survived a terrible crash in an F1 car that is very reminiscent of the F1 film.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
So you are in for a treat. A really fun discussion with a true virtuoso race car driver.
Sandy Winnefeld:
But first, many thanks to our sponsor for this episode, Culligan. Culligan's drinking water systems deliver the superior filtration and refreshing hydration you need to fuel your high-performance lifestyle. Culligan: Water You Love.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
We caught up with Romain at his home in between races.
Sandy Winnefeld:
All right, Romain Grosjean, it is great to have you on The Adrenaline Zone. We love if we can have a race car driver because there is plenty of risk associated with that. And we are just delighted to have you with us today. We appreciate you making the time for us, and we have a ton of questions for you. I am going to start it off by asking you what sparked your desire as a kid, I am assuming, to be a race car driver. You grew up in France. What got you going into racing? Was there any particular advantage that you had growing up as a kid that prepared you for the track?
Romain Grosjean:
Yes and no. My grandfather was vice-world champion of skiing, so I started skiing. And then, I don't know, probably when I was 8 or 10 years old, my dad asked me to stop skiing because he thought it was probably too dangerous. There were some doping stories and...
Sandy Winnefeld:
Yeah, skiing and racing. Let's go to race car driving instead of skiing. I got you.
Romain Grosjean:
I didn't go straight to race cars. I did BMX for a bit, and then a few concussions later, my mom asked me to find something else. So this is how I ended up doing go-karts. I had been doing go-karts for fun, but definitively that is where I started going racing. And that was 26 years ago.
Sandy Winnefeld:
And this was your first race in France?
Romain Grosjean:
It was in France. I lived in Geneva, Switzerland. I grew up in Switzerland. I am Swiss and French. I am known as a French athlete, but I grew up in Switzerland. Luckily, when I was about 8 years old, a race track opened about 15 minutes from where we lived in France, but really near Geneva. So every Wednesday afternoon, every Saturday morning, I would go to the race track and drive go-karts and ended up being the fastest kid there. People told us, "Well, you should try to go racing." And I guess that was good advice.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
So how did you get into F1 series racing? Is there some sort of progression? From go-karts to F1, that is a big, huge difference. There must be a progression for that.
Romain Grosjean:
Absolutely. They make it easier to understand nowadays. It is called F4, F3, F2, F1.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Okay.
Sandy Winnefeld:
Of course.
Romain Grosjean:
Back in the days, it was a bit different. The names were different, but the character was the same. So I was French champion of Formula 4, I was European champion of Formula 3, I was Asian champion of Formula 2, and then I was leading the Formula 2 championship, and then I got called to go to Formula 1. So yeah, I won pretty much everything up to Formula 1.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Did someone come to the go-kart track and discover you, or did you have to go out and seek different teams to interview with to get your first break into it?
Romain Grosjean:
No, my dad was my mechanic. He is probably the worst mechanic in the world. I love him to death, but it was disastrous. I was lucky that he was able to finance the early part of my career. And then I won a scholarship from Lista in Switzerland, and that was my first season in single-seaters. That is the only time I actually competed in a Swiss championship. I won 10 races out of 10 races. I had 10 pole positions, 10 fastest laps. So I got it all that year. And then the year after, I went to the Formula Renault French championship, so that would be F4. Right. And then I got into Renault Driver Development where I was a Renault driver, and made it to where Formula 1 was then.
Sandy Winnefeld:
So, Romain, as you progressed through, obviously it is a prove-yourself progression from F4, F3, F2, F1. But I am sure that along the way there is an intellectual progression in your own mind that you are learning. Take us through the steps and what you had to learn in order to handle a high-performance racing machine. A lot of little things probably, right?
Romain Grosjean:
Yeah, a lot of little things. You have been flying fast aircraft, very complicated aircraft, and we do not put you straight in an F-14. You go in a Cessna 172 and then you go bigger and faster and so on and so forth. Right. So it is kind of the same. The races are 25 minutes when you start in slow cars, and then they go 45 minutes, and then they go an hour, and then the cars get faster. But I am going to tell you something. I am going to turn 40 this year. I wish I was 20 years old, but with the knowledge and experience that I have today.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Oh, I have said that, yeah.
Romain Grosjean:
Life would be a lot simpler.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
All that hardware and experience. Did you have a natural hand-eye coordination or did you have to develop your hand-eye coordination to get to the skill level to manage the kind of dynamics in those really fast cars?
Romain Grosjean:
I think that is kind of natural. I have played tennis since I was a very young kid. I love tennis. That is really good for hand-eye coordination. Did it play a role? I have no idea. But I have a really good butt sensor. That is what you know. It is the same in an aircraft, I guess.
Sandy Winnefeld:
Yes, absolutely.
Romain Grosjean:
I did my private pilot license back in 2022 or 2023, and the instructors were like, "Have you flown an aircraft before?" I said, "No, but it feels like a race car, you know, just it moves around and I know what to do." So unusual attitudes, they would try to put you anywhere and be like, "Yeah, we are here and here and here. How do you know?" "Well, I just feel it." Right. So I think that is what is very important in racing, is how you feel things through your body and you realize what the vehicle you are in is doing.
Sandy Winnefeld:
I can really relate to that. Romain, in the F-14, when you are trying to land on an aircraft carrier, the instruments are giving you information, but they are always lagging just a little bit like they probably are in a race car, and it is your butt that is really telling you, "Hey, I am getting a little slow, I am getting a little fast," or whatever. And it is the butt that talks to you first. We used to literally say that, your butt tells you what is going on. It is funny to hear somebody in a completely different discipline say the same thing.
Romain Grosjean:
Yeah, 100%.
Sandy Winnefeld:
Just curious, in the F1, do you have power steering and all that? I am not sure. But you have raced IndyCar, which I don't think has power steering. In terms of physical preparation, it is not just you step into the car and you are ready to go. There is some training you have to do to be ready to do these very difficult races, right?
Romain Grosjean:
Yes, absolutely. So Formula 1 and IndyCar have actually got two very different training regimens. You mentioned in Formula 1, it has got a power steering wheel. If it fails, there is no way you are going to turn the wheel. There is so much downforce on those cars that you just cannot physically turn the steering wheel. So it is all about your core and your neck. Right. Because you get so much G-force, 7G on braking. Five and a half when you turn in high-speed corners. I mean four and a half, it is just like being in a washing machine. IndyCar is way slower on the corners, even though it is faster on the straights because we do ovals. So we have a very specific configuration for that. The cars are way slower, but there is no power steering wheel and the tracks are bumpy and difficult. So it is a lot more muscular, targeted more on shoulders and grip strength and forearms. Rather than Formula 1, you are a lot more into the cardiovascular, the neck, and the core. I have learned that. I have adapted my training. I am a cycling lover, so I cycle still a lot for the cardiovascular, but I have got to put quite a lot of gym in there.
Sandy Winnefeld:
We were just going to ask you a question about the difference between IndyCar and F1, and I think you just answered that question. Are there any other significant differences between those two venues?
Romain Grosjean:
Like a DC-3 and an Airbus A380? There is 30 years of technology of difference. In IndyCar, everyone has the same car. The only thing you can change is the dampers. You can develop those. So they have got to an incredible level of grip on the dampers. But the cars, they do not need to be the highest of technology because everyone is buying from the same suppliers. In Formula 1 you change every year. You depend a lot on your car. The technology on those is absolutely outstanding. So I would say, in terms of cars, that is the difference. And then of course, in IndyCar you have the ovals that we are not used to having in Europe.
Sandy Winnefeld:
First of all, do you have a preference between the two? And F1 must be so much more expensive because so much is changing so fast.
Romain Grosjean:
I think Formula 1 is about 10 times more expensive than IndyCar, if not 20 times. But they also travel the world. It is just a different series. I think they both have their pros and cons. You ask me which one I prefer. It is like when you have a boy and a girl, which one do you prefer? They are two different things, right. I was lucky to do 10 years in Formula 1. I have been lucky now to do another four or five years in IndyCar. Great fun, kind of different. Only racing in North America makes it easy on the travel schedule, but also a lot of fun. And the Indy 500 is of course a monument of racing.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
So you mentioned the technology in an F1 car. Can you talk a little bit about that? How much can you control as a driver? Are there things that are being controlled outside the car? What is sort of the most advanced technology that you consider critical for the car and how it performs?
Romain Grosjean:
So Formula 1 banned telemetry a few years ago, so it is a one-way communication system. The teams can read everything that is happening on the car, but they are not allowed to send anything to the car. That changed maybe 20 years ago. So before the race, you have to decide all your parameters. There is a lot you can change to the differential. You can play with your differential, you can play with your brake balance, you can play with your brake migration, you can play with your engine braking. Those are the main ones.
Sandy Winnefeld:
So the instrumentation goes one way, but they can talk to you, right? They can say, "Hey, we are seeing this." I mean, you have got a whole bunch of buttons on the steering wheel, right? It is not just doing this, right? You can manipulate a few settings in the car, can you not, from the cockpit?
Romain Grosjean:
Yeah, you can. The way it works is all of those are set up before qualifying, and the time that the Formula 1 car leaves the garage and goes into the pit lane in qualifying, you are under parc fermé, so you cannot change any settings. Which is very tricky when it is raining one day and dry the next day or the opposite way around. So in qualifying, you have to prepare for everything you want to have in the race. That is different in IndyCar.
Sandy Winnefeld:
But in the middle of the race, you can't touch anything behind your steering wheel, like pressure or something like that?
Romain Grosjean:
Everything that map-wise was in the car prior to qualifying, you can. So you probably have six engine braking settings, six brake migration settings. You have 36 diff positions. Six on entry, six on mid, and six on exit. That is 18. Sorry for my math. And engine braking, you have six bits and pieces the driver can play with.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
With respect to the safety of the cars, then that is probably part of the technology advancements that the cars have made over the last 20 years. Can you talk a little bit about how the safety of the cars has evolved over time as well?
Romain Grosjean:
Yeah, I mean, they have changed dramatically since early 2000, I want to say. You know, before in Formula 1, 1994, Ayrton Senna was the last accident that was a death until Jules Bianchi in 2014. So that was 20 years. And then after Jules Bianchi, we brought up the halo in Formula 1, which actually saved my life in my accident in Bahrain. In the meantime, the chassis have become stronger. Since my accident, they changed the design of the fuel tank and the fuel tank cap that actually broke, and that is why it caught on fire. So every time they always improve technology. The mastering of the carbon fiber, making it lighter but also more resilient has been fantastic. So I think all those technologies have been insanely good and they keep improving year after year. You know, helmets, race suits, gloves. I mean, name it.
Sandy Winnefeld:
They enclosed the cockpit too, in F1.
Romain Grosjean:
So that is named the halo. And then in IndyCar, we have an aeroscreen. So it is a screen in front of the driver. It has pros and cons. Anything flying on an oval would be good to have the aeroscreen, but also you have very little airflow in the car, so it gets really hot.
Sandy Winnefeld:
We will ask you about Bahrain in a little bit because that was a really amazing event for you, I know. And before we do that, I kind of want to ask you about what is the sort of culture of a successful racing team, whether it is F1 or IndyCar. Maybe there are differences, but how does that culture play into success?
Romain Grosjean:
I think it all comes from whoever is leading the team. It is always very difficult to know why someone is a good leader or not. You can tell when they are acting if they are one or not. But it is very difficult to pinpoint what it is. I would say that the tree always comes from the roots, and those are the roots. So it is pushing your people to do the best they can, making them feel like they can surpass themselves. We all make mistakes. That is called life. It is learning from those mistakes and not destroying those people at the time. So I have seen really, really good leaders. I have seen terrible ones. But again, when I meet someone, within five minutes if you ask me if he is one or not, it is going to be difficult. But you can tell after a little bit. I had the chance one day to have dinner with Arsène Wenger. If you follow football or soccer in Europe, he has been an Arsenal coach for many, many years. And a 30 or 45-minute dinner, I don't know, it was just so impressive to know and see how that person could, within 45 minutes, understand you completely and almost get the best out of you.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
You mentioned a little bit about communications between the team and the car. So how do you guys manage that? Because I would imagine it can be distracting and you probably have to sort out what is really important to communicate. And so what are those kind of things you are trying to talk about during the actual race when your concentration has to be on the road?
Romain Grosjean:
The radio communication does not always work that great. The quality is very often poor. So you only try to communicate important things. Advice, maybe, if you are using your rear tires too much, they can tell you. If they think there is a setting that is going to help you, a strategy, they ask you if the tires are fading. So again, they have all the sensors in the world, but you are the one telling them, "Hey, I can do another 10 laps on those tires," or "They are about to die next lap, so please bring me in." Those are the things you talk about. And they always try to talk to you on straight lines. You know, there is nothing more annoying than you get to a braking zone and suddenly someone is calling you like, "God damn it, not now."
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Shut up.
Romain Grosjean:
Yeah, it is like you are about to land on the aircraft carrier, and then the tower is telling you, "Hey, you are cleared to land." I know, I am about to land.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
That is right.
Sandy Winnefeld:
And you know, we have talked about this on previous versions of this podcast, where it is very much a right-brain activity, where your language is not something you want to be dealing with when you are processing in parallel, not in series. Exactly. Funny that you say that. You live to embrace risk. In the air, on the slopes, and anywhere your determination takes you. But when it comes to the drinking water that fuels your adventures, you are not looking to take chances.
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Sandy Winnefeld:
Get started by scheduling your free water test at culligan.com. I suppose that there is a lot of strategy in terms of when you go into the pit. It has to do obviously with fuel, but tires as well. And so it is just when the right time is or when there is a yellow flag or something. I mean that is quite a decision. Is that a mutual decision or are they telling you, "Come on in"?
Romain Grosjean:
That is one of the big differences between Formula 1 and IndyCar. In Formula 1, pretty much all the strategies are decided before the race. Since 2010 or 2011, we do not refuel the cars. With what you start, you have to go to the end of the race. So it is never going to be a fuel thing. It is always going to be a tire thing. And they are running a crazy amount of simulations behind the scenes to know when is the best time to pit. And if there is a yellow, yes, you take it because the pits do not close. In IndyCar, you have an 18-gallon fuel tank. The pits close when it is a yellow. So the tires are actually less important than your fuel. You really want to try to go to the end of your fuel. And the last stop is, "When can I get home? Is it 28 laps to the end? Is it 30 laps to the end? Can I save a bit more fuel than my friends and pit on lap 31 to go?" There is a yellow coming on lap 30, you are right, king of the world. If you stayed out, you are dead last.
Sandy Winnefeld:
That is amazing. I was going to ask about the pit stops themselves because I had, Romain, the opportunity to sit right above the pit for the Arrow racing team during one of the Indy 500s. And that was just an eye-watering experience to see how those cars come in, screech to a halt, and I mean they are gone in no time. Can you talk to us about the considerations? We already talked about going into the pit, but what about the keys to a successful stop? Obviously, it has a lot to do with the crew.
Romain Grosjean:
The crew is very important. The fueler is the one that is going to take the most time. So if the fueler can be plugged in in less than four-tenths of a second, that is really, really good. And then your fuel takes between 6.8 to 7.2 seconds to fuel, right? So your tires have to be done in that time. So then it is all about going fast, but doing it slowly so you do not lose a nut, so you do not do the wheel wrong. Then, you know, you do not drop the car when the wheels are not tight. It is about precision and remembering sometimes that slow is faster. But you know, when you are leading the Indy 500, try to tell that to yourself.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
I would like to circle back to this concept that in an F1 race, the strategy is all set before the race. So that does not give you a lot of flexibility during the race to adjust to surprises and perhaps other people's strategies. How does that all play out?
Romain Grosjean:
Yeah, no, there are very, very few surprises in strategy. In Formula 1, you have Plan A, B, C, and D prior to the race with different stops and tire compounds you are going to put on, like soft, medium, or hard. It is all predetermined on Sunday morning prior to the race. So that is why you very often see a lot of people doing the same thing.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
But if you know the other teams really well, you kind of know the strategies that they employ. And so isn't it sort of hard to out-strategize or maneuver your opponents if it is so preformed before the race?
Romain Grosjean:
Well, the problem is that you know exactly your tire wear, you know your tire degradation. So are you losing a tenth a lap? Are you losing a hundredth per lap? You know you can make 30 or 40 laps on the tires, and then you put that all in the simulation, and it is going to give you the fastest race time. And that is what everyone is going for, because at the end it is 305 kilometers that every Formula 1 race is about the same, apart from Monaco, which is 250. How can you get that distance the fastest? And everyone tends to go that way.
Sandy Winnefeld:
So that is fascinating to me that they are doing simulations actively during the race. Is there any artificial intelligence creeping into that or is it sort of formulaic?
Romain Grosjean:
They are using it more and more. They are using all the technology that they can use, as much data as they can use. They put everything in, all the climatic environment, air pressure, temperature, chance of rain, how many laps were done. And the simulation keeps evolving because sometimes you go in a race thinking you are going to lose two-tenths of a lap on tire degradation, and you end up only losing a tenth per lap. So that completely changes the strategy of how far you can go. So that is what they are monitoring. They look at the tire temperature. When the tire temperature starts to drop, that means you are running out of rubber and that means you are getting close to running out of tires. So they have all those data going into the computer, and the thing runs a thousand simulations per minute and comes up with, at any time, the best output.
Sandy Winnefeld:
Wow, that is amazing.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
You know, when our dynamic flight time of flying in the shuttle is up and down, during launch and reentry, we have got to react in an instant if there is something that goes wrong. So we have got these checklists that you immediately go to based on certain failures and so forth. Do you have things like that in the car? When things can go wrong in the car during a race, when you are flying along the track at some incredible speed, how do you manage those kinds of failures or those kind of contingencies when things are not going so well?
Romain Grosjean:
That is where you have the team and the radio and they basically tell you what to do. "Fail Foxtrot 39," okay, or whatever. One of the very common problems we have is we lose a wheel speed sensor. And you are going to say, "Well, it does not really matter. You do not have a speedometer in the car." No, but the gearbox has got sync gears and synchronized gears. And if you lose a wheel speed sensor, they do not know where they are anymore. So the gearbox cannot do the seamless shift and you lose about a second per lap. So you very quickly have to disable that sensor so the gearbox reads out of the other one and does not take that into account. So that happens very, very often.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
So they have the contingency list?
Romain Grosjean:
Yeah, they do, yeah.
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Sandy Winnefeld:
So let's talk about Bahrain. I do not know if you like reliving that very often, but in 2020, you probably had one of the most shocking crashes of the modern era. How did that happen? What was going through your mind? And how did you get out of that car?
Romain Grosjean:
I pulled myself out of it as much as I could. It took me a little longer than it should have. For my wife, for my kids, for my hands, it took me 28 seconds, I think, to jump out of that car. It was stuck under a guardrail, and there was a very, very tiny place for me to jump out. So what is happening through your head is that you do not want to die and you want to survive, and you have to find a solution. So I guess you never know if you have a survival instinct or not until you discover that you have one. And I think I do.
Sandy Winnefeld:
I know exactly what you are talking about. That is amazing. How did you go about rebuilding your confidence? Or did you even have to?
Romain Grosjean:
I was in my hospital bed and the first target was to race the week after, albeit that became very clear that that was not going to be possible. So then it was two weeks after, there was the last race in Formula 1, and I tried everything I could to go to that race until the doctor told me, "Yes, potentially you can, but if anything happens on your hands, we may have to remove your hand from your body." At that point, I was like, "Well, maybe it is not worth it, and I will wait a few months before I jump back in a race car." But I kind of told my friends and family that I was maybe going to take a break. That was a lie just to make them feel better. Yeah, I was never going to stop.
Sandy Winnefeld:
So you have had a pretty decently long career, obviously migrating into the pinnacle of the sport in several areas. How has your approach to taking risks changed? I am just guessing here that when you were younger, there was more of a "go for it" attitude. And now that you are older, you might give a guy an extra inch at 200 miles an hour that you might not have given when you were younger. Any reflections on that as you have gotten more experienced?
Romain Grosjean:
I don't think I give him a more inch. What I think is that I think more about making a move. But once I have decided that I am committed to a move, that has not changed. I think there is nothing worse than going halfway through something. That is where you have problems. Either you commit, or you bail out of it, but in between is never good.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
That is always a bad place to be. Yeah, we have talked already about the fact that you have raced between IndyCar, F1, and others, and you just completed the Rolex 24-hour race in Daytona. So can you talk a little bit about the different culture of competition and safety and so forth between these different series and pros and cons or how well it works?
Romain Grosjean:
Yeah, I started doing endurance racing in 2022. I think I actually had done it in 2010, but back at it in 2022. And it is very different because you share the car with two or three more teammates, and it is not about pure performance for yourself. Right. You have to go fast, the whole crew goes fast. And I may like a car that is very specific in one way. My teammate may not like it. So it is all about compromise and creating a team that works well together. It is fantastic when you manage to do that. It is just a great feeling. And 24 hours is a fun race. You start in the day, then you go into the night, and then the morning comes and you think you are almost done, but no, you still have nine hours to go, and then hopefully you see the checkered flag. So we did not this year, sadly. We got crashed into early in the race and we had to retire the car. But I really love it. And there are three endurance races in the US every year. There is Daytona, Sebring, and then Petit Le Mans back in October. And I looked at my calendar. I am free for Petit Le Mans, so I may do it.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
How do you split the driving up? Do you have two or three or four-hour shifts and then just keep rotating because you have to be able to stay alert and at least get some rest in between your driving shifts, right?
Romain Grosjean:
Yeah. Ideally, you do two or three stints. So a stint is 45 to 55 minutes. You normally do two or three and then get the next guy in. After that you just start to lose a little bit of focus, and it gets hot in the car, and you do not have food, and you know.
Sandy Winnefeld:
Do you sleep at all in between?
Romain Grosjean:
Yeah, I sleep really well. So I just go shower, eat, sleep, back.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Sounds like fun.
Sandy Winnefeld:
Actually, one of the things we have asked some of our risk-takers in various sports and the like is whether you have any sort of unique rituals, you know, something you do right before you walk out onto the line there or any particular way you like to relax after it is over? Any unique Romain rituals you have got, like drink a milk or something? I don't know.
Romain Grosjean:
No, I always get dressed the same way, and I always jump in the car from the right-hand side. Is it a ritual or is it a routine that gets me into the zone? I cannot answer that question. I used to have one pair of underwear that I would wear on Friday, one for Saturday, and one for Sunday. And once I forgot those and I won the race. Well, I guess they were not that lucky.
Sandy Winnefeld:
Had nothing to do with it. I love it.
Romain Grosjean:
Yeah, I love it.
Sandy Winnefeld:
You must have simulators though that also. Are there simulators for every kind of race you do or is it only for the high-end F1 and Indy stuff?
Romain Grosjean:
It is mainly high-end, but we also, for Daytona, we had a simulator. We work with Ford Racing and they have a great simulator up in Charlotte. The IndyCar Honda simulator is in Indianapolis. I have a small one at home, but there is nothing you can work on really from home. So those big video games, I like to call them, are actually very helpful to set up the cars. I don't think they bring me anything as a driver, but to make the car faster, they are definitely a very good tool.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
So as we have discussed, you have been racing in a lot of different fora with a lot of different cars. Are there any aspects of racing that you have not yet experienced that you would really like to? What is left?
Romain Grosjean:
Not a lot. Right. I have done Formula 1, I have done IndyCar, I have done endurance racing, I have done the Le Mans 24 Hours, I have done the Indy 500, I have done the Monaco Grand Prix, I have done ice racing. I have never done anything in the desert like Paris-Dakar or something like that. I wanted to when I was a child. I am not so sure about sleeping in a tent in the middle of the desert being my cup of tea. I think twice about it. I just love racing in Australia. There is that race, Bathurst, the Mount Panorama that I would like to do in a V8 Supercar one day because I have been watching that race since I was a kid. So there are still some races I want to compete in. Hopefully, I will have that chance before I retire.
Sandy Winnefeld:
So, Romain, you probably know this, but World War I fighter ace Eddie Rickenbacker was also a famous race car driver who competed several times in the Indy 500, which you yourself have done, what, twice? I think the famous World War I fighter pilot Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, right? He said it is not the crate that matters, it is who flies it. So I want to ask you how you assign the relative importance of car and driver to the success of a racing team. I know it is a hard question.
Romain Grosjean:
No, it is actually quite simple. In Formula 1, the car does 98% of the work. The driver does 2%. You have to think that there are 20 drivers in the world. I don't know how many people go into space every year, but it may be more than people driving Formula 1 cars. I think you are already at the top, top, top of your game. The difference between each is really the car. In IndyCar, it is a little bit different. I think that the driver has a bigger input. Except at the Indy 500. If you try to drive the car, you are finishing in the wall. The car has to drive you. You are just in there. But the car is fast or slow. It is not the driver. And that is something that is very hard to apprehend and understand when you come from Europe.
Sandy Winnefeld:
So I have got another question. Everyone knows about the movie, and you probably knew we were going to ask you about this, F1. I know from my own experience, because I was at Top Gun when they made that first Top Gun movie, that it sort of dramatized the business, but at the same time, it carried kind of a kernel of realism. Have you seen the film? And what did you think? I mean, is it crazy or cringeworthy, or did you like it?
Romain Grosjean:
I have not watched it, to be honest. I think it may be a little bit too Hollywood. At least that is what I heard from my friends who have watched it, and I know they tried the best they can.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
They do that with space movies a lot. I totally get it.
Romain Grosjean:
I am sure they do on space movies. I mean, it looks great when you don't know anything about it, you are like, "Oh, my God, this is like this and like that." But I am sure that when you have lived it, it is like, "It is not quite like this."
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
No.
Sandy Winnefeld:
And one of the hard things about it, this was hard in the first Top Gun movie, is capturing the true violence of the sport, as it were. You know, the camera just cannot. They did a better job in the second movie than they did in the first one. But it is hard to really get that real feel, right? Filming 5Gs going around a corner is not something that the movie really would capture very well, I guess.
Romain Grosjean:
No.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
As we wind down, one of the things we like to ask is if there is anything that you want the general public to know about race car drivers that they may not already know.
Romain Grosjean:
We are not crazy. I think we love speed, we love competition, but I think everything we do is as calculated as it can be. Of course, there is a risk to it, like landing on an aircraft carrier, like going into space. You calculate as much as you can. You know there is a risk in it, but you are not crazy by doing it. And it is funny because a lot of people tell you you are crazy. Not really. My cars are made to go that fast. The track is safe to be that fast. I think someone that drives like a nut on the roadway is way more crazy than a race car driver that actually does that for a living and in an environment that is safe.
Sandy Winnefeld:
Yeah. It must drive you crazy to be on the highway in America. I mean, we interviewed a truck driver a few times ago and he was like, "Hey, the biggest risk for me is those four-wheel drivers." But amazing. So just out of curiosity, what is your next race, Romain?
Romain Grosjean:
It is going to be St. Petersburg, Florida, in about two weeks. The first race of the IndyCar championship. And then the week after we are in Phoenix. The week after, I think we are in Dallas. A busy couple of months coming ahead.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
It is a brutal travel schedule, isn't it? That IndyCar circuit.
Romain Grosjean:
We have 18 races this year. As I said, luckily we do not travel outside the US, only once in Canada. So that makes it a lot easier. Well, I am adding elsewhere nine Formula 1 races. I am also going to Bahrain for Formula 1. I will do Miami, of course, but then I am also going to Brazil, to Baku, to Madrid, Spain. So I will have a busy, I think, 30 weekends away from home.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Wow.
Romain Grosjean:
Yeah, I like staying busy.
Sandy Winnefeld:
So you were talking about superstition a minute ago. Here is a good superstition for you. Almost 70 episodes ago, Sandra and I interviewed Josef Newgarden. And since then he won the Indy 500 twice. So you are due.
Romain Grosjean:
Okay, I will take it. I promise I will take it.
Sandy Winnefeld:
Well, look, thank you so much, Romain. This has really been a fun interview for us. We love talking to people like you. It has been terrific, and we really wish you the best. You do not need luck, but the best of luck. And be safe out there. And we will definitely be following you this season in IndyCar.
Romain Grosjean:
Thank you for your time so much. And you always need luck. I will take it.
Sandy Winnefeld:
Okay.
Romain Grosjean:
All right.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
Certainly does not hurt.
Sandy Winnefeld:
That was race car driver Romain Grosjean. I am Sandy Winnefeld.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
And I am Sandra Magnus. Thanks again to Culligan for sponsoring this episode. Get exceptional water for exceptional performance.
Sandy Winnefeld:
Learn more at culligan.com. We would also like to thank our producers, Podigy, who do such a fine job of making us and our guests sound our best.
Dr. Sandra Magnus:
And finally, thanks to you listeners who have been with us now for seven seasons.
Sandy Winnefeld:
We hope you will join us soon for yet another season of The Adrenaline Zone.