Written by Archie O’Reilly
As the musical chairs of IndyCar’s driver market silly season entered full flow, sophomore Sting Ray Robb was expecting to be one of the drivers with the fortune of continuity for 2025.
So when, just shy of one month from the close of the 2024 season, he was told that David Malukas would be joining his AJ Foyt Racing team for 2025, the Idaho native was caught off-guard.
Within four hours of Robb being informed about the move, Malukas’ switch to Foyt was confirmed. It all happened very quickly and Robb soon knew the writing was on the wall for his time at Foyt.
“That was a bit of a surprise,” Robb recalls. “The expectation was shocked a little bit.”
But in keeping with his well-liked persona, Robb is not holding any grudges for the manner in which he was shuffled out of a resurgent Foyt team after only one year.
“No hard feelings,” he says. “I still cheer for my engineers and Santino [Ferrucci] is a great teammate. So I’m sure that he’ll have some great things coming this year and I’m hoping those guys can have some fruits of their labour that are worthwhile.”
Fortunately, knowing the volatility of IndyCar and the fact that a return to Foyt for 2025 was not formalised, Robb’s camp had been exploring alternative options. So after an impressive half-season with Meyer Shank Racing led to Foyt - with links to Team Penske - snapping up Malukas, Robb was at least a free agent ahead of the game.
Conversations with Juncos Hollinger Racing (JHR) had been ongoing for a short period before Malukas signed for Foyt in Robb’s place. At that point, it was firmly in the ‘exploring opportunities’ bracket.
But in light of Robb’s abrupt Foyt exit, preliminary conversations would go on to develop further. And experience with the Juncos team - for one year in Indy Pro 2000 and two years in Indy Lights - meant there was a past relationship to build on.
After all, Robb’s greatest career success came for Ricardo Juncos’ team winning the championship in Indy Pro 2000, the third-tier American open-wheel series, in 2020.
By the end of November, Robb’s return to JHR - now in the premier American open-wheel championship - had been confirmed.
“Ricardo had approached us because of the relationship we’ve had in the past there with him,” Robb says. “There were some good memories and so the opportunity came about naturally.
“And as we entered the off-season, I think maybe two/three weeks before the announcement came out was when we signed. And then we were just trying to put the pieces together in the meantime.
“Thankfully we were in a spot where we were already talking to other teams - Juncos being one of them. My manager, Pieter Rossi, did a great job to manage that relationship throughout the season and the off-season.”
While Robb did have an existing relationship with Juncos, it was not necessarily rekindled in the most amicable of states.
He was a third-year “veteran” when he first joined the team in 2019 in Indy Pro 2000, though a third winless season and fourth in the standings saw him fall short of the championship. To go and win seven races and take the title the following year was an impressive jump forward, earning him the scholarship to step up to Indy Lights with the team the following year.
But by the time Robb concluded his rookie year in Indy Lights, now rebranded as Indy NXT, in which he finished eighth in the standings, the bond had become frayed.
“That 2021 season was just really tough,” Robb says. “There were times where I felt very frustrated as a driver because I wasn’t getting the most of myself. I felt like the car was not where I needed to be at all times. But that was part of the learning process together.
“It was still a young team for them engineering wise and so there was a lot of development that still had to be done throughout the year. I had a great teammate - Toby Sowery was my teammate for a good part of the season and he’s a great wheel man himself.
“So it was a lot of fun but, at the same time, it was very challenging. And by the end of the year, the relationships had disintegrated a little bit throughout the team. Everyone was very frustrated with the results.”
Frustrations stemmed from the fact that Juncos’ attention was diverted to the team’s burgeoning IndyCar programme, which commenced with a part-time effort with Callum Ilott late in 2021.
“We didn’t get to see the best of Ricardo and what his team is capable of doing,” Robb says. “The focus shifted elsewhere.”
By the time his rookie season in Indy NXT had concluded, Robb had made the choice to pivot to Andretti Autosport for the 2022 season.
He would go on to finish runner-up to Linus Lundqvist in Indy Lights with Andretti in 2022, graduating to IndyCar with Dale Coyne Racing (DCR). Two years later, and three years on from departing Juncos’ Indy Lights outfit, a frank conversation was needed upon Robb reuniting with JHR.
“Reconvening with Ricardo a few years down the road, we were able to approach that situation with hindsight of saying: ‘This is what I have for my expectations with you, Ricardo, if we were to sign. And this is what I’ve seen in the past,’” Robb says.
“And [Juncos] said: ‘This is what I’ve seen in the past.’ And we were able to mend that relationship. Really I got to see Ricardo’s passion reignited, in a way, over the course of the last few years, which is great.
“There’s a reason that he has come from where he’s come from to this point in motorsports. That green team has done a lot and has been impressive at different times. They have not magically fallen into the right spots at the right time. They’ve worked their way there.”
Now a third-year IndyCar driver, as Robb looks ahead to the 2025 season back on the books at JHR, he faces a third reset of team in as many years. Stability can be key early in a driver’s career, so Robb acknowledges it is not ideal to have bounced from DCR to Foyt to JHR in three successive off-seasons. But he sees positives too.
“There’s some lack of continuity that I think is difficult to deal with as a driver because you can’t develop with the team from season to season,” Robb says. “I think it has helped. The learning has been a steep curve so far and I think every year I’ve moved forward as a driver. I hope this off-season I’ve done the same. So I don’t see it as a super big negative.
“I think it would have been nice to start my IndyCar career with a team and really develop into the driver that they needed and develop the car around what I needed.
“When you’re looking at guys like [Scott Dixon and Will Power], they’re not redeveloping their language and communication in between seasons. That scale, that communication, it’s built over time. Having that continuity is big.
“But I’ve definitely been on a fun learning curve changing teams from year to year.”
Robb ended the 2024 season 20th in the standings, which was a gain of three positions from his rookie season. After finishing inside the top 20 only five times as a rookie in 2023, 10 top-20 results and a maiden top 10 - ninth at Gateway - provided signs of improvement.
But Robb did finish 11 positions behind teammate Santino Ferrucci, who achieved 11 top-10 finishes across the season, in the standings. He acknowledges the progress made but is still not content.
“Overwhelming feeling [is an] underwhelming feeling,” Robb says. “There were many times where I thought we’d be running further up the field and just couldn’t put it together.
“We had unfortunately quite a few mechanical failures throughout the season: St. Pete with the brake failure, Barber with the steering wheel actually falling off the steering column… that was pretty incredible. There were just little details like that that fell through the cracks.”
Given the struggles in his maiden season in IndyCar with DCR, Robb viewed 2024 through the lens of being a ‘second rookie year’ with the Foyt team.
“It was frustrating because I felt like there were times where I could get the most out of the car but we’d have something happen,” he says. “And there were times where the car was good and I just couldn’t put it together.
“So that was the second rookie season stripes, if you will. You have this inconsistent season as you’re learning, setting the expectations. Going into this year, I’ve learned what I need from a vehicle, as well as the systems that I need behind the scenes to develop that vehicle.
“And I think that Juncos has done a very good job from an organisation standpoint to build structure and systems throughout the team that allow me to have that clarity, which leads to confidence in the long run of what a vehicle is that I have and what I’m driving.”
The Gateway top 10 was a particular highlight for Robb in 2024, as was leading the third-most laps of any driver in the Indy 500 with 23 laps at the front of the field on an alternate strategy.
As he joins JHR, he wants to continue on an upwards trajectory and strive for more of those moments.
“I think it will continue to be a learning season,” he says. “Because anytime you stop learning, you start moving backwards. And especially in IndyCar racing, things change, things adapt. But if you don’t have a foundation, then it’s really hard to make that adaptation.”
Robb is encouraged by his first outing with JHR in the full-field group test on the short course at Sebring International Raceway earlier this month. He placed fourth in the first of the two sessions he ran across the two-day test.
“I’m trying not to get my expectations too high but I was very, very proud of what we were able to see from the team - day one, roll off the truck with a strong car,” he says. “And I felt like I didn’t have to knock the rust off too much.”
Robb’s off-season included getting married, so when thinking of goals for the season, top of mind is ensuring he remains happily married whatever may happen on track.
“Molly is my wife and she’s a big fan of motorsports,” Robb says with a smile. “So I don’t think that that should be too big of an issue.”
Given the competitive nature of IndyCar, he is unable to put a defined number on what would make a successful third season in the series. But after two challenging years that have taken their toll in some respects, Robb is keen to rediscover the fun of racing.
“One thing that I realised this off-season is that I wasn’t really enjoying IndyCar racing,” he says. “And I think that the key to success in anything is to have a passion for it. So my goal is to get through the season and say: ‘Yeah, that was fun.’
“Because I’m a competitive person, I’m not going to have fun finishing last. So hopefully I can stand back and say: ‘Yeah, that was fun.’ And I think that the results, they will be what they’ll be based off those expectations at the end of the year.”
For Robb, the re-finding of enjoyment in his racing has been a process.
“I think this plays into my faith a little bit,” he says. “It’s a big part of who I am and how I see the world. But I think a lot of times we hear: ‘I have a calling towards this.’ And I felt that ‘calling’ towards racing for much of my life.
“Subconsciously, I think I held that calling to God’s truth for who I am, and if I’m not able to do that, then it’s a complete failure of faith. And so I realised that the only true calling that I can have is God’s word and what he explicitly has already said in God’s word, the Bible.
“And so I’ve held that as truth this off-season and that racing is a gift of passion that I’ve been given.”
Robb’s goal for the year is not to place too much pressure on himself. He has reached his life goal by racing in IndyCar and wants to be able to enjoy living out his dream.
“I don’t have to put that subconscious pressure on letting it be a complete failure of faith if it doesn’t work out,” he says. “I don’t need to have that. And when that clarity comes, there’s confidence that comes along with that. But it gives me the freedom to enjoy it for what it is, as well as let it be honouring in a different way.
“So it was a bit of a shift in faith rather than anything else, which is unique. But it’s a spot that I had to get to mentally to see: ‘Okay, I can have fun doing this and I’m allowed to do that.’ And I feel very blessed to be in the spot that I’m in.
“I’m trying to do it from a place of gratefulness and trying to not put too much expectation on myself and let that subconsciously ruin who I am in the midst of a race weekend.”
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