Marcus Armstrong blames Ferrari F1 training for 'ruining' his enjoyment of driving

IndyCar driver Marcus Armstrong recently spoke about how he rarely enters a "flow state" while racing. The Meyer Shank Racing driver explained how his work as a development driver for Ferrari sucked the enjoyment out of driving because of concentrated work on the technical side of racing on the simulator.

Armstrong became a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy in 2017. The New Zealand driver tested his first F1 car in January 2021. He piloted the Scuderia's 2018 challenger, the SF71H, during a four-day test at Fiorano. However, with seemingly no future on the team, he left the driver academy in 2022.

In a recent appearance on fellow IndyCar driver Conor Daly's Speed Street podcast, Armstrong was asked about how often he finds a flow state while racing. He admitted that such instances drastically reduced after simulator work for Ferrari.

"What I used to do on the simulator in Ferrari, that kind of ruined my instinctual and intuitive feeling of being in the zone and being in flow state because I used to spend between 100 and 130 days on the sim doing development work," he said. [1:04:45 onwards]

The 24-year-old explained how the engineers would change tiny details, like the ambient temps or wind direction during the blind tests, increasing the onus on him to give better technical feedback.

"It's all blind tests. You never really know what you're doing and you need to be always thinking about what you have underneath you, and ultimately, you don't rely on your feeling anymore. You're always thinking. You're inside your head thinking about what you feel inside the car to give good feedback on what the engineers are testing. So I feel that ruined being in the zone and enjoying driving. Now it's easy for me to... I don't want to sound cocky, but it's easy for me to drive the car and now I'm starting to think 'What can we do better from a technical point of view?' That sort of takes away the flow state," he added.

Armstrong completed his third year in the FIA F2 championship with Hitech GP in 2022. He won three races, but many subpar results only earned him a 13th place in the championship standings. With no openings in F1, he switched to IndyCar in 2023 to drive for Chip Ganassi Racing.

After two years with the championship-winning CGR team, he signed with Meyer Shank Racing for 2025 and beyond, which has a technical alliance with CGR, essentially keeping him under the same team umbrella.

A 'dead end' forced Marcus Armstrong to end his Ferrari partnership

Marcus Armstrong with Laurent Mekies at F1 Winter Testing in Barcelona - Day One - Source: Getty

Marcus Armstrong was a part of the Ferrari Driver Academy for five years before exiting it in January 2022. He explained how the team evidently had no place for a young driver with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz firmly tied to their seats.

In an interview with Feeder Series America in February of that year, Armstrong said:

"It wasn’t sudden. It was one of those things that where it was quite evident that there was no real Formula 1 future there seeing as they have those seats fairly tied up at the moment. It’s similar to Callum [Ilott], we were living together and discussing it on a daily basis so we sort of knew that it was a dead end."

Callum Ilott also joined Ferrari Driver Academy in 2017 and served as the Italian team's test driver in 2021. In 2022, along with Marcus Armstrong, he jumped ship to IndyCar with Juncos Hollinger Racing. He currently drives for PREMA Racing.

Armstrong has had a bittersweet start to the 2025 IndyCar season. The Meyer Shank Racing cars are fast enough for Top fives. However, a mistake during the first race at St. Petersburg, clipping the wall, caused suspension damage to his No. 66 car, leading to a P24 finish. He recovered well in the second race at the Thermal Club to earn a P7 result.