INDYCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 2, 2022

Colton Herta

Felix Rosenqvist

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: As you know, the summer stretch continues for the NTT INDYCAR Series this week. It's a return to the streets of Nashville and the second Big Machine Music City Grand Prix. Coverage begins Sunday at noon on NBC, Peacock and of course the INDYCAR Radio Network.

Our guests this week, coming off success on the last street circuit the series visited, the Honda Indy, Toronto, Colton Herta, driver of the No. 26 Gainbridge Honda for Andretti Autosport with Curb-Agajanian. Colton won pole position in Toronto before finishing second. Also the pole winner at the inaugural race in Nashville.

Felix Rosenqvist is on a roll, pole position on the road course at IMS last Saturday, led seven laps before finishing in the top 10 in Toronto, came home third there, so a podium on the last street circuit we were at. Felix drives the No. 7 Arrow McLaren SP Chevrolet.

Colton, let's start with you. Mixed memories of Nashville last year starting from the pole. You led a race-high 39 laps before heartbreak with just a couple laps to go. How much are you looking forward to getting back to the Music City?

COLTON HERTA: So much. It's an awesome market for INDYCAR, and I wish it came sooner. It's so much fun to be downtown right there in the heart of Nashville, and an awesome track with its unique challenges compared to a lot of the street courses that we go to, and it seems like we're going to have a lot more unique challenges this weekend if it ends up raining like the forecast says.

THE MODERATOR: Big picture this season, two poles, a couple top 5s on street circuits. Clearly there's something you enjoy about street racing. What is it in your opinion?

COLTON HERTA: I think we have a great car for it. The damping thing is so important at every track we go to, especially the ones that are so bumpy, and I think we have a great damping program.

Yeah, it just seems to work. At all the street circuits we go to, we seem to have a phenomenal car to drive. Hopefully this kind of continues. We had a great car last year, but you never know what you're going to get when you come back to a street circuit and there's some changes to the track. I'm hoping it's as close to what it was last year this year, and we should be in good shape.

THE MODERATOR: We want to bring in Felix, a podium in Toronto and your best finish of the season. Really part of the surge that this team has been on lately. Is there a reason why things are clicking right now for you guys?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Yeah, I mean, I think it's details, as always, in racing. There's not one major thing that is like changing everything. It's all the small things.

I think for sure, I've been on my A game the last seven, eight races. I think the pit crew has been on their A game. I think the engineering team has really figured out, kind of simplified our program a little bit. Seems like we have a little bit more similar car to all the street circuits we go to, to all the road courses, like instead of having like 12 different cars we have four different cars now, and that strategy seems to have really helped us in our program.

Yeah, it's just -- I think the team is really vibing well. We're a young team still. There's a lot of new things happening in McLaren and Arrow McLaren SP every day, and I feel like everything is kind of gelling a bit more every weekend, and yeah, the results are following that trend. It's a good place to be right now.

THE MODERATOR: It should also be noted our friends at Bridgestone and Firestone are introducing the plant-based guayule tire as the alternate tire at Nashville, all sorts of sustainability benefits with it. I know some of your focus, as well. How important is a step like this in your opinion, Felix?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: I think it's important for INDYCAR, for us drivers and teams and Firestone to show that we do our part in being sustainable. Obviously we'll try this tire in Nashville. It's a little bit of an experiment, obviously. I'm pretty confident that Firestone has put something together -- we actually tried them in the pit stop competition during the Indy 500. We only went like 100 feet in a straight line, but they seemed pretty grippy. They seemed very sticky when you touched them.

Yeah, hopefully it's going to be like a one-lap qualifying thing where you just go out of the pits slow and then hammer down one lap and then come into the pit. I think that's pretty cool when you have that kind of qualifying.

We'll see. We'll see how it goes.

Q. Felix, not to belabor the point, but are we starting to see what we would have seen from you -- what we all expected to see from you when you joined Arrow McLaren SP but the crash at Detroit really set you back. Are you just now starting to feel like you've got everything back to the way it was going to be prior to that crash?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Yes and no. I don't really think if affected me that much. I think last year was a whole other animal with different difficulties as an organization. I think I for sure struggled with the car last year. I wasn't confident in the car.

But it was a whole other bunch of things going on that I think are just sort of out now. But I think the drivability thing has probably been the main key for me. If you look back at last year, there was a couple of races where we were quick, but over a season we weren't strong. Only on the ovals pretty much.

Now I just feel like I can get the most out of the car like every track we go to, if it's an oval or a street course or road course, and I feel like that's a bigger thing for me. But together with a bunch of other things that are just working a lot better from a team standpoint.

Q. Every week we talk to you about next year. You're having a great run here the last couple of races. Do you really think this is giving Zak Brown pause to thinking about keeping you there next year in INDYCAR?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Well, it seems like he has a lot of other things to think about right now. Yeah, it never hurts, right, like if you're doing well, if you're performing -- I think if you have the pace, that's always a good thing. I don't think it hurts.

Obviously the conversations we had have indicated that it doesn't really -- that's not really what it stands between, if I'm quick or not quick. But yeah, I think it's more complex than that, let's say, but I think it never hurts. If you're doing well, it's always going to help you somehow. That's all I can do, as well. I'm just going to continue to keep my foot down and try to win races.

Q. Colton, you've had some great cars. You've had some very promising races, a lot of frustration. You seemed to bounce back pretty quick from the frustration. But I'm sure right now fourth or fifth in the championship would look a heck of a lot better than 10th right now. How frustrating has it been, especially this past Saturday, coming off Saturday at Indy?

COLTON HERTA: Yeah, yeah, it is. The most important thing is we've had speed pretty much everywhere we've gone. I think the Indy 500 was kind of the outlier where we weren't great, qualified 25th, and weren't that great in the race.

I think everywhere else I've been very comfortable with the car and very confident, but yeah, for one reason or another, we just can't get a roll going. I thought after Toronto we would get it going, then we had an issue in Iowa. We weren't really incredibly fast in Iowa anyway. I think we still could have finished in the top 10.

Then obviously come to Indy and leading the race and that happens.

I'd like to just finish out the season and just be in the top 5 in every race and just get kind of the ball really for what we need with no more issues and no problems and just finish off the year strong.

Q. As a budding musician, how fascinated are you by some of the places in Music City? It's not just country music; that's kind of the center of a lot of different music genres. How fascinated are you to go through some of those areas of Nashville and see some of the histories of music?

COLTON HERTA: It would be cool. I'm actually staying a little bit after because last year I had a sim day Monday morning so I had to fly out that night, and I really didn't get any time to explore Nashville. I had never been there before. This time I'll do it properly and I'll get to go see everything, hopefully.

Q. Has this been one of the more mentally taxing seasons you've ever had? You've had pace. Things have happened while you were leading. Has this been one of those seasons you almost look forward to getting through?

COLTON HERTA: I mean, at this point, yeah, because we're not -- realistically we're not going to win the championship. It's too far out of reach. Maybe if we have an amazing string of the rest of the races we can maybe creep into the top 5, but that would be a pretty big ask.

I'll just kind of use the end of this season to focus on the next season and kind of butt through it.

Like I told Bruce, just try to get those top 5s every single race. Hopefully we've got some good races coming up for us. St. Louis last year we were leading when we had a hashed off brake; Nashville, that went -- I don't want to talk about that one, but we were fast there; and Laguna, we've won two times there in the last year. We've got really good races coming up for us, we just need to maximize what we can do on those weekends.

Q. A lot of athletes talk about a 24-hour rule. Do you operate under that? Do you put Indy aside on Sunday and move forward and start focusing on Nashville or is that something that weighs on you for a while?

COLTON HERTA: No, I try to move past it as soon as possible just because it's no point in -- it's such a weird failure, what happened, that it shouldn't really ever happen again. It was just a strange one. It just sucked that we were leading and it happened.

Yeah, it's one that we definitely just want to move on from it.

Q. With the new tire this weekend, I'm assuming you guys will probably use that on Friday. How much do you foresee maybe a little bit more action on the Friday session with trying to just run this new tire and trying to get used to it? I know Colton you said last week at Indy with the reds, and Conor did, too, the balance just seemed off. Does this new tire kind of give you a little concern at all, or do you think Friday is beneficial to get some laps in on it?

COLTON HERTA: I think as long as it's consistent throughout the field, then it's not a problem. I'm not sure, to be honest. I don't know what's different about the tire. I know maybe the sidewalk construction is a little bit different. But beyond that, I don't know about surface area of the tire, so I don't know, maybe the media knows, but I don't really know the difference in it right now.

FELIX ROSENQVIST: I think it becomes a bit more interesting in practice. I mean, normally you can get a -- in a way, just because it's a different color, doesn't really mean that you need to explore much more of the tire. Like if it drops off a lot, like then you know that pretty early and you're probably going to have to do like 15 laps on it and just deg it like crazy.

But yeah, obviously we want to find out like what's new with this tire, and is there any advantage in doing that on Friday, maybe instead of doing one qually run, you do one qually run plus five, six laps just to kind of see where it goes.

Yeah, it's like always. Even doing that it's hard to know where it's going to go in the race because the track changes and all those kind of things. It's actually one of the biggest tasks for the team right now to figure out like where do we think the tires are going to go in the race.

I think it's interesting. It makes it different, and it's something new for us to take into consideration going to the weekend.

THE MODERATOR: I can speak to a little bit of that, the plant-based guayule shrub will make up the sidewall of the tire. The patch on the tire that will hit the asphalt is basically the more traditional, softer rubber that Firestone uses, so that kind of gives you an idea what their process is, and I think it's going to expand as this goes along for many years to come, so hopefully that is helpful.

Q. Colton, obviously you were running really well last year in Nashville; what's the secret to a good lap around Nashville in your opinion?

COLTON HERTA: I'm not too sure. I think you can make up a lot of time by braking for that Turn 9 and Turn 4. It's quite difficult because the car is unloaded and that right front tire is very unloaded so it's easy to lock that tire. If you get a good balance, you can probably make up most of the time through there, those two corners.

Q. In terms of the issue last week in Indy, did you get bottom of it?

COLTON HERTA: Last I talked to them yesterday, it was still unclear. I talked to them in the morning, though, so they were still going through everything. I haven't called them yet today. I'm going to call them after this, and hopefully we'll know. But it was unclear when I called them yesterday.

Q. What's the secret behind the recent success with yourself, like how consistent you've been in recent races?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Well, I don't think we've been very consistent. We're still having a lot of issues. Like Indy GP, Iowa, Mid-Ohio, we had all those races actually had mechanical issues that cost us a lot of points. I wouldn't sit here and say that we're like on a massive roll because we're still not winning races.

But yeah, the performance is good. We're there pace-wise every weekend pretty much since Indy GP, the first one. Oval, street course, road course. So I think that's obviously a massive step.

As I said before, it's all like details. I definitely feel like I'm comfortable with the car. I'm in a good rhythm with the car. Just I feel confident to throw down a lap whenever. I feel like as a team we're working better and better together. We're starting to understand a lot of things.

I think as a two-car team, it's been a lot of, like, research and development done during the weekends where mainly you kind of want to focus on driving, but we've been more focused on trying different setups and stuff, and now we're kind of getting to a point we have so much data from trying a bunch of things that we can go into weekends -- like Indy GP, for example, we went in and we knew exactly where we wanted to be instead of going into like experimental mode in practice.

I feel like that's going to be more the case going forward now. It's going to be more and more -- like we're going in with more and more confidence on the engineering side into the weekends, and hopefully we'll see better -- keep doing better and better results.

Q. Colton, it seemed that you have like a pretty fast car but not as much reliable as you should want. I'm talking about recently you had that issue in Indy. How does an INDYCAR driver recover that confidence that you need to reach some good results, and what are the plans of your team to improve that reliable part of your car?

COLTON HERTA: Yeah, I think you just kind of learn as you go. I think some of the stuff that we've seen fail has been kind of electrical and a little bit strange. Then other stuff has been weird, like brand new drive shafts that snap and stuff. It's been a little bit of an oddball. I still have full confidence in the team. They've given me really fast race cars at probably 95 percent of the races. I think Iowa was the only place where we kind of lacked, where we couldn't be in the top 5. But everywhere else I felt like we could be there or thereabouts, and maybe four or five times this year I thought we've had like race-winning cars.

So yeah, the confidence is still there. I understand these things happen and stuff, but unfortunately it's happened quite frequently and a lot this year. We need to kind of be on top of it, make sure we understand what's going wrong so it doesn't happen again.

Q. You were too fast in Toronto; how do you feel it would be this difficult to repeat a result like that on the next season, the next round?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: It's always difficult to finish even top 10 these days or top 5 or podium. It takes a very good day to get there. I think, as I said, the pace, we seem to have it pretty much everywhere, at least in qualifying, so it seems like we're always in a good position to do well. I think the races -- they're kind of the same as Colton's. I feel like we kind of had the same seasons in a way, a lot of reliability issues, like a lot of races where we've been doing well and things out of our control have happened and we've been DNF'd or having issues with mechanical stuff.

I feel like if we can clean up that and keep doing what we're doing apart from that, we should be in a position where we can get a couple of podiums before the end of the season.

Q. How hard is it to beat Pato in some races? How internally does the team work between you and your teammates?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: I think we work really good together. I think what we're contributing a lot to the team in very different ways. Pato is probably the quickest teammate I've had, so when you beat him you're doing well.

But I know also that I've been beating him more regularly the further forward -- the more recent races has been more that direction.

I always strive to beat him, but I also know that if you're not putting everything together, he's probably going to beat you. But that kind of team dynamic you want. You can be very competitive in that aspect, but then you still help each other pushing the team forward between the sessions.

Yeah, it's a really good working relationship, and I think it's really allowed us to just be a bit quicker this year as a team.

Q. I am from a country that doesn't have a lot of motorsports culture. I've always been curious if one of the INDYCAR drivers have plans to visit this country or know something about it?

COLTON HERTA: I love lomo saltado. Three of my friends are Peruvian. I have had a lot of Peruvian food. Never been to Peru. I would love to go and see Machu Picchu.

Q. Yeah, Machu Picchu, then Lima. You should try ceviche.

COLTON HERTA: I love ceviche. I like the country but I've never been, so maybe someday.

Q. And you, Felix?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: I wouldn't say I know a lot about Peru except for the things that Colton mentioned. If we can go to new countries, I'm always open for that. I would be happy if INDYCAR went more international. I'm a big supporter of that.

Q. Felix, Nashville is where you started working a little more closely with Craig Hampson last year; do you feel you guys are finally on the same page and working towards what you've wanted to do?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Yeah, I think that relationship is ever growing, with your engineer. I'm sure Colton could agree with that, that that's never a finished product. You always -- the weekends are so short and stressful, and the easier it is to communicate with your engineer, the better weekend you're going to have.

I feel like me and Craig at this point, there's so many things, if you go back five months ago it would take me like 20 minutes to explain something, now it takes like two minutes because he just knows how I am, and he knows that I'm a driver that has emotions and feelings, and sometimes I'm angry and sometimes I'm lazy and sometimes I'm late or whatever. Like he kind of -- we get each other at this point. That's what it's all about in the end.

I think especially in INDYCAR, it's more about like the psychological side and knowing your driver, and for the driver to know the engineer, rather than just pure engineering skill, if that makes sense. But everyone does it different, but I think we're definitely getting to a point now where we like really gel well. Yep, it's good.

Q. You seem to be lacking a little top end or straight-line speed at the road course race. Did you guys find something that was causing that?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Yeah, I don't know the whole explanation behind it, but basically the short version is that we have a brake dragging pretty much at occasions during the race pretty badly. At the times where I lost a lot of positions, it was basically like an anti-Push-to-Pass effect. Unfortunate, but we think we know -- it's not really our fault. It's hard to explain, but we've addressed it, and it's definitely not going to happen again.

Q. Colton, last year, as I recall, you went through one of the qualifying segments using blacks so you had a fresh said of reds for Q3, contributing to the ridiculous margin that you had over the rest of them. Is that going to be feasible the second time around do you think, or has everyone got such a handle on the track and plus you've got to deal with these new types of tires, is that going to kind of limit your ability to kick everyone's ass again?

COLTON HERTA: Yeah, I think it will be more difficult. Everybody has a lot more data from the weekends, so they understand a little bit more of what they needed from the car or maybe ride height, spring setups and whatnot to handle the bumps. It will be a little bit more difficult for sure. I think we still will have a great car, but I kind of won't be able to answer that question until you kind of see practice times and stuff.

Really we were really fast in practice, but we didn't know that we were going to be able to do it in qualifying. We just kind of do it off the wind when we're in the session -- obviously it was a pretty easy decision there because we had a pretty good gap, but if it was maybe six-tenths or so, seven-tenths, it's difficult to make that decision because you don't want to be the guy that can get the pole, have a really good shot at it, and you get knocked out in round 1 because you thought you could make it through on blacks.

Q. Do you find that that will actually -- do you think the chance to try them before qualifying, does that inhibit or reduce the amount of margin that you have over the opposition, or do you think that will allow you to exaggerate the margin?

COLTON HERTA: It's hard to say. I think the feeling should be similar because the contact patch is the same. You never know how soft or stiff the sidewall will be with this new stuff compared to what we had before. I don't think it'll be a bad tire as far as deg and stuff knowing that now the contact patch is the same. It's more in the sidewall. But it'll be interesting to see the loads in the corners and what that might do to spring rates and damping and how that might affect it, if it's flexing a whole bunch or just a super stiff sidewall. It might completely change what you need from the car.

Q. I know you don't like to be labeled as a certain type of driver who excels at one type of track, but it seems to me that the street courses are, in fact, the ones that you have excelled at. Do you think there is a particular technique or part of your technique that works best on street courses, because obviously you qualified Fast Six at Nashville last year and then you were very quick in Long Beach, Toronto. Is that a particular favorite of yours, street courses?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: I mean, if I could pick, I'd probably take a street course. I don't know. I don't know if there's like a specific technique. I think I just enjoy the challenge of it, and I don't know, I know some drivers just don't really like street courses because it's like bumpy and it's big consequences, but I guess like just a positive mind to it might be a small advantage.

But at the same time I also struggled on St. Pete this year. I wasn't quick at all. It's so marginal these days that I feel like all the drivers are kind of like experts at all kind of tracks at this point.

But yeah, there might be a little bias towards street tracks, but I cannot tell you if there's like a specific trick or anything like that. It's just so detailed.

Q. Having said that, you've been massively quick on road courses, as well. You had two of your poles at the IMS Grand Prix, we've seen you shine at Laguna and Portland. Do you believe a win is feasible before the year is out, and do you believe that that would be the clincher that kept you in the INDYCAR team for 2023?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: The target is definitely to win races. That's been a clear target since we kind of -- as we talked about before, like the upward trend that we had. We've been leading races. We've been having poles and podiums, and naturally you want to go win the race, and I think we can do that if we just kind of do our jobs and put everything together on the same day.

Do I think it's going to make a difference to whether I stay or not? I don't think so. I mean, I think it helps me every time I can prove myself, and those results -- in racing, you're always as good as your last race, and that still goes for situations like this. Even if someone is saying it doesn't matter, it always matters. If you do well, you're a top property, and if you don't do well, you get overlooked pretty quickly.

Yeah, the target doesn't change. I think I'm just focused on winning races, and that's going to be it for me until the end of the season.

Q. Who do you think is going to be in the Piastri, Palou or Ricciardo?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: I don't know, man. I honestly don't know. I'm just enjoying the whole thing from a safe distance.

Q. Felix, you're watching from a safe distance. This silly season is rather silly in two series. I'm wondering how you both are following it along, if you are at all, and since it kind of affects both of you in a way, what do you do with this information when you see it on social media?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: I mean, I don't know. Nothing really. I think my situation is obviously not very linked to this situation. It's rather to the previous situation that was similar. You kind of like try to filter out, how does it affect you and in what ways can you change the situation, or like what details do you need to care about, and once you know that, you kind of just focus on that.

I think at this point like nothing has really changed for a while now for me. Like we're still kind of in limbo about next season, and we have this whole court case going on on the side, which we know nothing about, or at least I don't.

As I say, I'm just focused on driving really. It's obviously fun that things are happening, at least for you guys, but yeah, I'm just focused on racing. We'll see where it all lands.

Q. Colton, do you have anything on all the stuff going on?

COLTON HERTA: No. I don't, sorry.

Q. Come on, something?

COLTON HERTA: I hope all the drivers are okay and they get to drive for who they want. But we'll see.

Q. Logan Sargeant got announced as an FP1 driver at COTA. Do you have any idea when you're going to be in the car?

COLTON HERTA: No, not yet. I was really excited to read that, though, because he definitely deserves it. With all the talk about that second Williams seat at the moment, who knows, he seems like he could be in there next year.

I remember he was really fast. I used to race go-karts against him. I did a few F4 tests with him when I was in F4 and I think he was coming to F4 the next year with Carlin, so he's doing a few test days with us, and he's always really fast in the car, so well-deserved. It seems like he's kind of lit it up over there this year in F2 and has two wins already and it's going well, so I wish him the best.

Q. Coming out of Indy, your band got to play. How did you think that went?

COLTON HERTA: Oh, it was terrible, but I had so much fun. It was so much fun to play at Indy. Melody Inn is an awesome place, especially for punk music. It was really cool to be able to be there. I saw you were there and Nate was there. That was fun. Hopefully we get to do it again because I enjoyed it so much, but maybe after the weekend, like a Saturday night thing.

Q. How many gigs have you guys played?

COLTON HERTA: We haven't played for like a year, but before that quite a bit. But it's just gotten so hectic because they're all at school, and I'm doing my thing, so it's hard to get together and play.

Q. How does someone become a competitive race car driver and also a pretty decent drummer? You're pretty young. You've got a lot of various skill sets.

COLTON HERTA: Well, when I was young my parents made me learn an instrument, so I chose piano at first and I hated it, so I started playing drums when I was like 11 or 12 off and on until the last few years. Yeah, I guess that's it.

Q. For both of you guys, they've moved the Nashville restart zone to where the race starts, on the long straightaway coming out of the bridge into Turn 9, and obviously last year where the restart zone was it created some problems. I wanted to get your thoughts on that.

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Yes, I think the restart zone was the big one that needed to change, so that's a great easy change. I drove that track on a simulator with other changes, and honestly it's nothing really major. I thought Turn 9 just seems a bit tighter.

I think the reason they did it was not because to change the racing or anything. It was probably because they needed to do it because there was like a building or something.

But yeah, it's very similar. It doesn't really change much. It's just a slower corner maybe that will promote more overtaking because it was kind of quick last year, so you needed a lot of confidence to send it in there to pass someone. So potentially better racing, and yeah, hopefully avoiding the red flag deal this year.

COLTON HERTA: I think it's going to be tough if you're the leader to get a good jump. It's a really long straight coming out of a really slow corner. I think it's better, yeah, because we don't want super long safety cars and just the mess of what Turn 11 was last year on the restarts.

I think it is a good decision. It's going to be tough as the leader, I think, to get a good jump on the field, but it is a really long straight, but now with the tighter Turn 9, probably a pretty good braking zone. It'll be interesting, though. It'll for sure promote some passing, I believe, and yeah, maybe guys will check it up the inside of Turn 8 before the restart and whatnot. It'll for sure be interesting.

Q. Colton, did you have a chance to check in with Firestone after you expressed the frustration with the inconsistent tires in qualifying at Indy? Did you ever get any explanation or did you have a chance to download with them?

COLTON HERTA: I talked to their tire guys a little bit. They said they saw a little something, but it was still kind of unclear to us what exactly happened. But yeah, I sent them -- we do Firestone reports after the race weekend, so I sent them my report on my feelings of what happened and the feeling I was getting inside the car. Hopefully it helps them kind of figure out what was going on there so nobody has to deal with that in the future.

Q. I'm sure you couldn't wait to get here after last year. Are you a little bit more motivated coming into this race coming out of last year?

COLTON HERTA: For sure. Just the season we've had so far, this is a really good opportunity basing off last year for us to win. Yeah, I am really excited to get back there. Like I said before, it's an awesome race. It's a lot of fun to drive that track. It's very interesting and a lot of different parts to it. I'm excited to be back.

Q. I know you guys just said the F1 announcement doesn't necessarily affect you guys, but do you foresee in the future racing contracts this year kind of changing the landscape of maybe wordage and team options or driver options or any of that moving forward?

FELIX ROSENQVIST: I mean, I think it seems like whenever this happens, it's always related to options. I think as a rule, teams generally put options in their contracts because they want to control the drivers.

I think this is my big case for drivers to get together and say let's not sign any options, or let's not put options in our contracts, because it just creates a mess.

I think if you have an option, that means that there will potentially be a mess if both parties don't agree.

Yeah, I think it might change a lot of things. There's probably going to be a lot of teams and drivers think about going forward signing their contracts.

Q. Colton, your thoughts?

COLTON HERTA: I really don't know what's going on. I can definitely tell you that there's three types of options. There's a driver option, a team option and a mutual option in contracts, and like Alonso, he had a driver option, so he was the one in control of his future.

For me, I've had options in the past, but they've been team options, and I've had mutual options where we both have to agree on a price to pay me, how long to do it for and whatnot. It's a lot to digest. It definitely depends on what type of options you have, though.

Q. I know NASCAR has got like a racing alliance. Do you foresee maybe INDYCAR drivers -- Felix, you mentioned the drivers all getting together and talking. Does there need to be some representation on the driver side maybe for future contracts, because it seems like this language could get messy in future negotiations.

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Yeah, I mean, whenever you sign a contract you're always -- first of all, you actually sign it, which is you're obliged to follow what it says. But I think also a lot of us, we've all been there when you're young, maybe you don't have any money in your bank account, you have a deal going, and it's very one-sided, but you still sign it because it's the best thing you can have.

I think in those cases, I remember when I came to Formula E there was a lot of drivers who came up to me and they were like, hey, think about this, like you should definitely have this in your contract, and I was like, oh, I really appreciate that because I didn't know anything. I never got paid to drive anything before that.

I remember I really appreciated it at the time and it maybe got me out of potential trouble. But yeah, I think at some point you kind of have to -- like it's definitely becoming a bit of an issue right now and it's creating a lot of mess, so hopefully we can just get together as a community, and like hey, what's going on here.

Q. Have you guys personally before these deals have happens, do you know the language in your contracts or do you usually have management represent you guys in those dealings?

COLTON HERTA: I read all my contracts. I know exactly every bit of it, when I'm allowed to talk, when I'm not, and whatnot. I think it's important. I think you have to.

FELIX ROSENQVIST: Yeah, your name is on it, right, so you have to know exactly what you're signing. It seems like in these cases maybe that wasn't the case.

It's always complicated. You don't know all the details. But it's definitely interesting. It makes you think of what can be different.

THE MODERATOR: We will leave it there. Guys, thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Safe travels.