By: Ashley McCubbin

TORONTO, Ontario — Racing across Europe for six years at the age of 16, Robert Wickens was having to find his way to races by travelling from train station to train station by himself. Each trip, there was always the question – Is this worth it?

Ultimately, it was worth it in the end as Wickens would go on to have a very successful motorsports career. Now after having success across a variety of both open-wheel and sportscars, he was honored on February 21 as one of the 2025 inductees into the Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame.

“That’s amazing,” he told News From The Pits. “Just knowing the alumni of the Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame, it’s been very humbling to be honored to be part of it. It’s kind of weird because internally, I feel like I’m not done my journey so I always thought maybe once I was retired I would get nominated, but to do it already is just a pleasure and to see so many familiar faces – some old faces with friends and family. It’s been an amazing opportunity for me to just take a moment to reflect. I feel like my whole career I’ve always been driving forward and driving forward and to kind of look back on what you’ve achieved is nice sometimes. It made me realize that I should probably do that more often.”

One of the most highlighted times of Wickens’ racing career came during his time in the NTT IndyCar Series, where he scored four podium finishes with a career-best second on two occasions – Phoenix Raceway and Mid-Ohio SportsCar Course.

“I think participating in the (Indianapolis) 500 was amazing and winning Rookie of the Year there was even more special,” he commented. ” My podium in Toronto – that was such an amazing event As someone who was racing in Europe for 12 years I never had a home race. So finally had my first taste of it and to get a podium in a way, it was a little unexpected but still get one, was an amazing experience. Like that third place felt like a win and the home crowd was amazing – gave me goosebumps.

“I was just hitting my stride as an an IndyCar driver at that point and unfortunately, it kind of all changed shortly after, but my pole on my debut was something special but I think that was deep down, there was more luck involved than it had been. Some people don’t realize there were kind of mixed conditions that started raining a little bit so yeah I think I capitalised at the right time and did what I had to. I think we were fast, but maybe not the fastest you know so like all the podiums I felt like were really harder and we had to really fight for all of them.

“Now the thing that I’ll always remember is that like I feel like that first win was like so close all the time and I never had the opportunity to see it through.”

Even though that chapter of his career may be closed, Wickens is not done racing yet by any stretch of the imagination, currently enjoying his time with Corvette Racing and General Motors with hopes of being “more of a full-time figure in that product for years to come.”

“We’re still working on the future but I’m continuing my work with Andretti Global as their driver coach for the IndyCar team so I got that,” he revealed. “I’m definitely going to be driving in 2026 but we just haven’t announced it yet so yeah we’ll see. We’re working hard to try maximise our potential and see what we can do and then focus more on the full-time position for 2027.”