Drivers, start your lawyers: Are lawsuits becoming IndyCar’s new normal?

Welcome to the newly litigious world of IndyCar, where drivers, teams, and key personnel continue to make the kind of headlines that cause distractions and cost more than anyone would ever want to spend on lawyers.

While lawsuits are commonplace in many other sports, IndyCar has mostly avoided that kind of drama in the modern era. Things changed last year when 2021 series champion Alex Palou and McLaren Racing crafted a plan to break the Spaniard free from Chip Ganassi Racing, and in this regard, the new two-time title winner is in a league of his own when it comes to deserving a dedicated channel on Court TV.

Having been sued from both ends by his current Chip Ganassi Racing team in 2022, and now his almost-team at McLaren Racing, it’s worth rehashing the point from August that with McLaren’s lawyers, who have all of the company’s financial might at their disposal, chasing Palou to extract eight figures of suffering is​ the kind of cold legal pursuit that will forever change his life while making absolutely no difference to the size and strength of McLaren’s bank account.

For the sin of crossing McLaren and CEO Zak Brown, Palou could be handing everything he earns from Ganassi or whomever else for the rest of the decade — and possibly longer — unless McLaren decides to call off its dogs. And if you know Brown, the odds of that happening with ease are somewhere between slim and none.

More than anything Palou might do during the offseason to prepare for more IndyCar with Ganassi in 2024, the 26-year-old needs to invest his energies into negotiating a truce with McLaren, because if he can’t, Palou risks becoming IndyCar’s first championship-winning indentured servant.

And if Palou’s legal sagas weren’t providing enough entertainment, he’s been joined by Romain Grosjean, the newest member of the IndyCar Litigation Club. Unlike the seemingly cut-and-dry scenario facing Palou, the Swiss-born Frenchman’s case against Andretti Global, where he’s seeking a resolution through arbitration, is less clear.

Palou is alleged to have signed a contract to drive for McLaren next year, received an advance on his salary, and reneged on the deal, for which the team is seeking a wild amount in damages — reportedly north of $20,000,000 — that could consume everything he earns for the rest of the decade if the team’s lawyers are successful. In the case of Grosjean, who was rumored to be earning $3 million per year at Andretti, the dispute is somewhat different than Palou’s in that the lack of a fully signed contract is said to be the main issue at hand.

It’s believed Grosjean is seeking compensation from Andretti for a contract extension that was never completed, and it’s here where an arbitrator would have an interesting time listening to both sides of the dispute. If Andretti and Grosjean went as to far as to negotiate the terms of a new multi-year deal, agreed upon a salary, and Grosjean signed the contract — which Andretti allegedly did not — would an arbitrator view the intent to continue in the driver’s favor, or side with Andretti for backing away from the table without finalizing the deal?

We’ll find out at some point in the weeks and months ahead as Andretti moves forward without Grosjean in its IndyCar plans. And where might Grosjean land in 2024? There are a few teams that are interested in his services, with Juncos Hollinger Racing leading the ‘don’t be surprised if he lands there’ sweepstakes.

It wasn’t a lawsuit between Team Penske and Arrow McLaren, but the defection of Penske race engineer Gavin Ward at the end of the 2021 season did enrage his team owner enough to see the full enforcement of the non-compete clause in the Canadian’s employment contract. In Formula 1, it’s called ‘gardening leave,’ which is a term that’s being spoken here with greater frequency.

In most instances when a senior team member expresses their desire to leave, the team will cut ties and expedite the divorce proceedings, but that wasn’t the case with Ward and Penske. Instead, Penske held firm with the non-compete clause and Ward was sidelined – for six months – until the middle of 2022. Despite the awkward start to the relationship, Ward quickly rose through the team and went from technical director to being given control of the organization leading into 2023 as team principal, where he remains today.

There could be a similar but light involvement of lawyers with a non-compete situation with Ganassi’s outgoing race engineer Eric Cowdin, who is rumored to be on the way to Ed Carpenter Racing to function as a senior technical leader within the rebuilding team.

Returning to Arrow McLaren, I don’t foresee things going the way of lawyers with the newly-departing Craig Hampson, but there could be another non-compete period in his contract to honor since losing someone of Hampson’s stature, just like Cowdin and Ward before him, is the kind of scenario where the current team doesn’t want to see their employee’s talents swiftly applied for the betterment of a rival organization.

Where Arrow McLaren finds Hampson’s replacement, and how Alexander Rossi will fare without the race engineer he wanted as part of his onboarding package with the team, has created another thread to track with interest.

​If we’re lucky, the intersection between IndyCar and litigation will be limited to these examples, but the specte​r of one more lawsuit exists between a current team and driver. I’d welcome a return to the days where such things were a rarity — USAC suing CART, or the organizers of the failed Boston Grand Prix being held accountable in court — that came across our radar every few years instead of every couple of months.

Full Story »