Marcus Armstrong is a man with a lofty set of expectations for himself after years of honing his craft in the junior formulae.
His only real shot in a premiere racing category has come in IndyCar, where he has been slowly getting to grips with the Dallara chassis.
He will join a new team in the form of Meyer Shank Racing for 2025, partnering former coach Felix Rosenqvist.
Hunting his first victory, it has been over two years since he stepped onto the top step of the podium in motorsport.
Marcus Armstrong says drivers punished with tequila for tyre talk
The core dynamics of various categories of motorsport are really the same at heart, with tyres, engines and the drivers a few of the main values.
Sometimes, these topics are spoken about so much that it can become repetitive and boring for those within the field to talk about.
So much so, that Armstrong has revealed to the Speed Street podcast that the phrase ‘tyre-deg’ has been banned at dinner and it punishable with a tequila shot.
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“There are times we’ve been out for dinner with a driver and other people and friends. We’ll talk about tyre pressures and cambers for half an hour. It’s just the most punishing form of conversation.
“We decided that every time someone brought up the word ‘tyre deg’, we were going to take a shot of tequila and the person that said tyre deg had to take a shot of tequila.”
How Armstrong bids to get his career back on track
Armstrong hasn’t finished inside the top 10 of a championship since 2019, when he finished as runner-up in Formula 3 for Prema.
That felt like the peak of his junior career, in the middle of a term with Ferrari’s driver development academy at the time.
It he had managed to kick on in Formula 2, there was a chance that he could have made it to Formula 1, but three consecutive 13th-placed finishes in the drivers’ standings killed any hope of that.
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Four top eight finishes in six races to round out the 2024 IndyCar season underlined his improvements and showed that he can deliver at the highest level.
All he needs to do now is kick on and show that he can do that every week for a team who have struggled a lit more than Chip Ganassi in recent times.