Alexander Rossi’s manager/father says his Indianapolis 500-winning son is getting closer to finding a new home in the NTT IndyCar Series paddock. Pieter Rossi, who manages IndyCar driver Sting Ray Robb as well, also says interest remains high and offers aplenty have been made to secure Alexander’s services.
“I think we’re getting close. There’s a lot of moving parts,” Rossi told RACER. “There’s multiple landing spots. It’s not bleak.”
To the surprise of many, Alexander Rossi and the Arrow McLaren team failed to get an extension signed that would keep the 32-year-old in the No. 7 Chevy beyond 2024. He continues to serve as the top free agent left on the market; finding the best fit, along with the best financial situation for the eight-time race winner, has been the challenge.
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Citing nearly half of the full-time teams due to compete in 2025, the elder Rossi rattled off acronyms for Juncos Hollinger Racing, the incoming PREMA outfit from Italy, Ed Carpenter Racing, Chip Ganassi Racing and Meyer Shank Racing as those who’ve held talks regarding Alexander’s availability. Some of those talks have concluded while others are ongoing.
“There’s been discussions with JHR, PREMA, ECR, Ganassi, MSR and one other,” Rossi said. “Obviously, they’re all at different stages. Yeah, money’s the topic. It’s not just, ‘Do they want Alex?’ They do. But can they? Will they? The budget’s all over the map, from top dollar to ‘we got no money.’
“He knows that IndyCar is hard to win a race in unless you’ve got all the pieces each weekend, which there’s two teams that do and the rest kind of fall in once in a while. And is he going to be with one of those two teams? No. Those two teams? I can tell you that Penske and Ganassi, no. But he does have longevity left in IndyCar, and there is value to a veteran driver that has a lot of experience that can help a team take the next step. Then it’s finding the way to pay for it.”
Asked if he thought his son’s landing spot would be finalized before or after the season finale on September 15, Rossi says the answer has evolved.
“If you’d asked me a month ago, I would say we’d have something done by the end of July,” he said. “It didn’t happen. I think the Olympic break hurt us, because everybody was gone and we lost three weeks because of that. Discussions are very active now, and we’re trying to get there now, it’s just trying to figure out the money. Literally, it’s trying to figure out the money. It’s not that they don’t want to. It’s just figuring it out, and we’re close.”
What’s the likelihood of his son returning as a full-time driver next season?
“Oh, he’s full-time,” Rossi said. “It’s hard to be 100 percent about anything anymore in life, but I would say 90.”