"Those guys didn't respect me" - Santino Ferrucci explains heated feud with Romain Grosjean

IndyCar driver Santino Ferrucci recently made an appearance on the Chase Holden YouTube channel where he spoke about the heated exchange between him and Romain Grosjean.

Santino Ferrucci and Romain Grosjean had multiple fallouts during the 2024 IndyCar season, especially in the first half of the season. The fallout reached its peak at the Detroit Grand Prix where Ferrucci allegedly blocked Grosjean on a qualifying lap and prevented the Frenchman from making round two. The turn of events led to feisty comments being exchanged from both parties after the session.

Looking back at the Detroit Grand Prix incident as well as the other heated situations, Santino Ferrucci said (from 3:35 onwards):

“You know there's a lot of learning. So starting off the 24 season it was kind of getting our bearings back and trying to earn some of that respect from other drivers that didn't really necessarily think of us as a threat. And there are some things that I know I didn't do or didn't handle quite well, some of the Grosjean situations, some of the Detroit situations."

“But you know it was more out of, in my opinion those guys didn't really respect me or respect us as a team and I took it a little too personally. So I was definitely on edge or very edgy for those couple events. But you know once I kind of found my rhythm with the team and we got things going again towards the end of the season and we found a cadence. I mean we were a top five contender almost every weekend which was awesome," he added

However, Romain Grosjean wasn't the only driver involved in the Detroit GP clash with Santino Ferrucci. The AJ Foyt driver also collided with Andretti drivers Kyle Kirkwood and Colton Herta in the free practice which led to a surge of comments from both sides.

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Santino Ferrucci and Kyle Kirkwood's heated exchange at the 2024 Detroit Grand Prix

Kyle Kirkwood banged wheels with the 26-year-old during the practice sessions, which led to the Andretti driver coming over to Ferrucci’s pit box after the session. The AJ Foyt Racing’s driver didn't respond well and jumped out of the pit to shove Kirkwood away from his pit box as Santino yelled:

“You turned into me, you turned into me.”

Kyle Kirkwood, following the pit incident, spoke with IndyCar and said:

“He drove right into me and purposely tried to drive me into the way. Then I went to talk to him about it and he grabs me and is shaking me. It’s insane. We’ve seen it before. I was going to tell him it’s completely unnecessary and kind of to see where his head was at. It just makes no sense to me at all.”

The incident happened at Turn 9 where the street circuit nature of the track narrowed into a tight corner. It's challenging for a single car to go through and Santino Ferrucci decided to go two wide into the corner causing the collision.