After making a “huge mistake” in 2022, former F2 driver and Red Bull junior Jüri Vips is getting a chance to restart his career. The Estonian will do two races with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing in IndyCar to prove himself as a candidate for a full-time seat in 2024. His F1 ambitions are in the freezer right now; Vips is fully focused on a career in America.

By Jeroen Demmendaal

The elephant had barely managed to enter the room before Bobby Rahal addressed it. Not losing any time, the 1986 Indy 500 winner immediately tackled the controversy around his new recruit, Jüri Vips. Yes, Rahal said, “it’s no secret that he made a mistake and paid a huge price”, but the co-owner of the eponymous IndyCar racing team was keen to look ahead. 

In Rahal’s view, Vips “has atoned” for his mistakes, very much understands that he can’t throw around racial slurs and has undergone extensive diversity training programmes in both the UK and the US to educate and improve himself. The bottom line, Rahal emphasised, is that “Jüri is just a very nice guy” and “a good person”.

Initially, we had to take Rahal’s word for it, as Vips himself seemed to avoid the topic in a virtual roundtable with selected media including Feeder Series. But then, in response to a direct question from another reporter, the 23-year-old finally spoke out about the harsh learning curve he has faced since being caught using a racial slur during an online gaming stream last summer.

“I feel like I have grown as a person, but yeah, I am really grateful for the second chance, and I completely understand all the outrage,” Vips said. “Now that I understand what the word means, [the outrage] is completely justifiable, and I am very sorry for everybody that I’ve hurt.”

Now that I understand what the word means, [the outrage] is completely justifiable, and I am very sorry for everybody that I’ve hurt

Jüri Vips

No more F1 ambitions

As the proverbial elephant shuffled out of the room again, the young Estonian was visibly relieved to see the conversation return to what really makes him tick: driving race cars. Vips, who tested with the Rahal team several times in the past year, has been brought in for the last two races of the 2023 IndyCar season as Rahal Letterman Lanigan assesses his suitability for its single vacant seat for 2024.

That also means his Formula 1 ambitions are completely out the window for now. Asked by Feeder Series whether he still harbours any hopes of making it to F1 given everything that has happened since last June, Vips dismissed that notion out of hand.

“At the moment, I have no thoughts of F1 at all. I really like it here in the States,” he said. “I’ve come to a couple of IndyCar races now, spent a bit of time here. So I’m really, really liking IndyCar and everything about it and America. It’s a very different environment to the F1 environment, and I’m just enjoying it so much. I’ve forgotten about F1 a bit. I don’t have any ambitions towards that at the moment. I’m just trying to get a full-time IndyCar drive for next year.”

Throwing the car around

Vips is the latest Formula 2 driver to make the switch to IndyCar in recent years, following the example of Christian Lundgaard, Callum Ilott and 2022 Hitech GP teammate Marcus Armstrong. Earlier this year, Armstrong compared driving an IndyCar with “wrestling an alligator” in conversation with Feeder Series, while Lundgaard told Feeder Series last year that there are plenty of similarities between the F2 and IndyCar chassis, both of which are built by Dallara.

“Somewhere in between those two,” Vips said with a laugh when asked about his own impressions of the IndyCar machine. “It’s similar in terms of downforce and power. I think [there’s] maybe a little bit more on each, so it’s a little bit quicker, it feels a bit quicker than F2.

“But I think the big difference is the tyres. The Pirellis you really had to drive smoothly, you couldn’t have any oversteer, and you just had to be very careful with what you were doing. I feel with the Firestones, you can just do anything. You can throw the car around a lot, which I really like. So that’s probably where the alligator term came in from Marcus.

“I think it’s similar in ways to F2 in terms of speed and cornering speed, but the driving style is completely different.”

Two historic tracks

Vips will make his competitive IndyCar debut this weekend at Portland International Raceway, a classic American road course. The Estonian said he is looking forward to the experience.

“Portland looks like this cool, old-school, pretty high-speed track – a really, really cool layout. I think it’s good for racing as well. You’ve got two long straights, one pretty much after the other. All the races that I’ve seen there look really cool.”

A week later, he will race at Laguna Seca, which renewed its track surface earlier this year and shed its decades-old low-grip asphalt.

“Laguna is going to be nice, especially now that they’ve repaved it,” Vips said. “You’re hearing different kind of numbers, but I think there were some cars running three, four seconds quicker. Anyway, Laguna is such a historic track, so it’s cool to tick that off the list. I think it will be especially nice because it’s going to be a lot grippier this year than before.”

Header photo credit: Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing