Romain Grosjean frustrated despite top 10 finish for Haas in Spain
Romain Grosjean was left feeling frustrated after the Spanish GP, despite the Haas F1 driver making the points in 10th place.
The Frenchman felt he was compromised by not getting the latest updated floor until Saturday, and by being forced wide at the messy start. From there, he found it hard to recover.
“In Turn One and Two I was on a good line initially, but all the guys spun in front so I had to go on the Astroturf,” he said. “And I lost quite a bit of positions there. If I could have followed [sixth-placed] Hulkenberg in the race it would have been a different story, I was much faster than the car in front of me on the soft tires, but I couldn’t use them.
“In the second stint I put the soft and went straight into traffic. I took care of them because I was planning to go much longer than others, because the pace was there, but we got the safety car. I made a small mistake, because the warm-up was slow, and Kvyat took the position. I was hanging in there, the car was not as good as I wanted on the medium.”
Grosjean is hopeful of better luck in the next race.
“Hopefully we can work harder for Monaco and get a better understanding. That’s two races in a row that I’ve been struggling with the car. Here I didn’t have the update on Friday, so I didn’t do any long runs with the update. It was very hard just going just on Saturday. That’s something that we need to work on as a team, just to make it better.”
Brakes were not an issue for Haas after the recent swapping between suppliers: “No big story. We’re running the Brembo. Not as good as they have been recently. It’s not our biggest problem.”
Meanwhile, his teammate Kevin Magnussen missed the points after a late clash with Dany Kvyat gave him a puncture.
“We could have had points with both cars, so I’m pretty disappointed,” said the Dane. “There was some contact there, and I would have been fine, but I had a puncture from the contact. I gave it everything I had, and I think if we had finished in the points, it would have been a good result for us.”
