Romain Grosjean has announced he is beginning arbitration proceedings against the Andretti IndyCar team he has driven for in the past two seasons.
Andretti has left the former Formula 1 racer out of its driver line-up for the 2024 season. It has slimmed its IndyCar programme down from four full-time cars to three. Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood have been retained and Marcus Ericsson has arrived, leaving Grosjean and Devlin Defrancesco without seats.Grosjean has spent the last three seasons racing in IndyCar since losing his F1 seat with Haas at the end of 2020. He moved to IndyCar by joining Dale Coyne for a part-time campaign, then joined Andretti last year.
During his time in the series Grosjean has taken three pole positions and finished second on five occasions. He was fourth in the championship standings after the first five races of 2023, but following a series of incidents fell to 13th by the end of the season.
Grosjean said in a statement posted to his official social media feeds today that he has enlisted a legal firm to bring arbitration proceedings against the Andretti team:
“I enjoyed working with the IndyCar team at Andretti Autosport, and am proud of the successes we shared through two seasons. I am thankful for the many friendships developed at the highest level of American open-wheel racing.
“I had expected to continue racing with the fine people of Andretti Autosport in the coming years. I am disappointed that is not being fulfilled, and wish Andretti team members well. I am pursuing other options to continue my IndyCar career in pursuit of excellence.
“I have commenced an arbitration proceeding in Indiana against Andretti Autosport, seeking to protect my rights. I am represented by John Maley and Mark Owens of Barnes & Thornburg, LLP.”
Andretti Global has teams in several series including IndyCar, Formula E and Extreme E. Earlier this week the FIA announced it had acceptive an application from Andretti to enter a team in F1.
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Pedro Henrique Fernandes Carneiro
5th October 2023, 0:27
Really, Grosjean? The guy that was nicknamed “the first lap nutcase” not once, but twice. Better be quiet about it
Mark (@blueruck)
5th October 2023, 1:42
at least we will have some news in the off season
mooa42
5th October 2023, 2:13
Dropped in favour of Ericsson, touche Andretti.
in my summation;
Ericsson = solid dependable,
Grosjean = high opinion of his own talent, unreliable and inconsistent
I think they made the right decision
SteveR (@stever)
5th October 2023, 2:17
So what is the ‘arbitration’ for? Breach of contract? Not happy about not having a ride? In America anyone can sue for anything, but that doesn’t mean they will win. More details would be helpful from a racing news site…..
elvira
5th October 2023, 2:55
I imagine that arbitration is contractually the first course for dispute settlement and the contract itself is likely thickly overlaid with NDA’s. Perhaps Romain, with precise forethought and his clever grasp of the English language, managed to insert a clause that indeed made Andretti responsible for his happiness.
HAL
5th October 2023, 6:56
Looks like Andretti had proposed a contract extension to Grosjean who signed it. But the team never counter signed it and put it on hold after a bad run of results…
anon
5th October 2023, 6:58
@stever since neither Grosjean nor the Andretti team have made any further public statements explaining the reason for those proceedings, it isn’t possible to provide the details that you’re asking for. As other posters note, there are probably non-disclosure clauses that mean neither side is able to comment in public to provide those details.
The rumour is that the dispute is over the Andretti’s having made a formal contract offer to Grosjean for the 2024 season, which Grosjean signed and returned to the Andretti’s for them to sign. However, they then don’t seem to have gone through with signing the contract and returning it to Grosjean, although it’s not entirely clear what exactly happened at that stage.
It is therefore possible that the reason Grosjean is taking action is because there was a compensation clause in the contract that would result in a payment being made to Grosjean if the Andretti team did not go through with the deal.
However, we do not know any of the details for certain, given the lack of publicly available information.
Asd
5th October 2023, 11:23
All those recent arbitration or lawsuits in IndyCar have been astoundingly amicable, so I believe this one is going to be too.
baasbas
5th October 2023, 11:55
Just guessing here.. Did they stall with not signing for an unreasonable amount of time which resulted in other options closing for him? If they just simply made the decision sooner he might have a drive somewhere else?
If that is the case, he at least has a reason to be salty
AlanD
5th October 2023, 21:56
Baas, they may have done that, but that happens in all walks of life, and you don’t hear people suing about it. Yes, he may regret not taking a different offer when he had the chance, but that isn’t Andretti’s fault.
Coventry Climax
5th October 2023, 13:08
He should just call it quits and be happy he’s still alive, after his silly move caused his massive crash and almost got him killed. He’s been accused several times of doing silly things in Indy too.
He’s fond of cooking. Maybe he should concentrate on that. Although I doubt that what comes out of his kitchen is of consistent quality.
Nick T.
5th October 2023, 23:02
lol, sick burn.
Grosjean is a complete joke. He owes his entire career to having gotten a ride in a car that would have won a WDC in the hands of an Alonso or Max, but which people didn’t realize how good it was at the time cause they assumed Kimi would be extracting its potential. Then Kimi joined Ferrari in 2014 and Alonso shut him out and more than tripled his points tally.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
6th October 2023, 4:57
Yes, I don’t think grosjean is useless, think he’s ok in the midfield as he was faster than other drivers and less consistent, so could generally compete, but the lotus is a good point, a really underestimated car, f1 metrics, who uses mathematical models to rank drivers and teams, made a comment to a similar extent, that alonso could’ve won the title in that car.
AlexS
6th October 2023, 16:53
He is not joke, i have read somewhere i think Motosport Magazine that someone that worked with him saw him doing driving capabilities that very few are capable of. That said he is consistent in being inconsistent and have some dangerous brain fades where he appear to think no one is around him.
Don
5th October 2023, 15:52
Lots of legal stuff going on with IndyCar drivers at the moment. I would hope both can be resolved through mediation, and I’d like to see Grosjean picked up by another team and try to redeem his three years in IndyCar.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
6th October 2023, 4:59
I have to say though that a lot of mediocre f1 drivers, like sato, did fine in indycar, so the fact grosjean isn’t doing anything worthy of note isn’t impressive to me.