Robert Wickens showed his passion to get back into an IndyCar after saying he wanted to try and push the pedals on his #6 Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports car during the team's recent launch event.
Wickens is continuing to recover from his horrific crash at Pocono last season and was in attendance at the launch of the team's 2019 livery event earlier this month.
"This is the first time I’ve seen a race car since I was on the grid at Pocono," Wickens told Arrow executives at the event, as quoted by IndyCar.com. "It makes me want to jump in one and see if I can push the pedal or not."
Arrow SPM's latest signing is former F1 driver Marcus Ericsson, but he will use the #7 entry.
Team co-owners Sam Schmidt and Ric Peterson have kept the #6 available for Wickens as a sign of support in the Canadian's recovery, should he be able to return to the cockpit.
"It means the world to me, the support I’ve been getting from Ric, from Sam, from Mike," Wickens added.
"I’m so grateful for the opportunity to race for them last year and I’m even more grateful that I’ll have the opportunity to race for them sometime in the future.
"I’m happy to have a great team to bring me here and to have a car here to show that they’re committed to me for my recovery."
Wickens has been very open with the steps he is taking in his recovery across social media with help from his partner Karli Woods, and his aim is to share his road back to fitness to help spread awareness on spinal injuries.
"The recovery’s been tough – it’s been the toughest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life," he added.
"I made the decision to share it with people to kind of see what’s going on. Because when we were doing research on what a spinal cord injury actually is, there wasn’t a whole lot of research on it on kind of what the recovery even looks like. So we’re trying to shine some light on it.
"Hopefully, people that are going through the same struggle, maybe they can get some inspiration from that. It’s not easy, there’s still a long way to go, but all I know is that the support from the fans has been phenomenal.
"The days that I’m feeling down, those guys pick me back up and get me in the gym. It’s been helping a lot."
