ROMAIN GROSJEAN : WE HAVE TO BE REALISTIC

For his tenth season in Formula 1, Romain Grosjean wants to forget a very complicated past year at Haas and start again before looking to the future.

Romain Grosjean is confident Haas can “have some fun” in Formula 1 this season after ironing out the problems from last year.

Haas endured its worst campaign in 2019 since entering F1 three years previously, finishing ninth in the constructors’ championship with 28 points, a point worse off than on its debut in 2016.

Team principal Guenther Steiner labelled the VF-19 the “strangest” car he has worked with as it struggled primarily with tyre management, while an upgrade introduced in Spain failed to work and was ultimately removed on the advice of Romain Grosjean.

Ahead of the new campaign that starts in Austria this weekend, and asked at Thursday’s FIA media conference at the Red Bull Ring whether he was confident the issues from last year had been ironed out, Grosjean said: “In that aspect, very confident.

“Everyone has had a very good look at everything, and I believe in that aspect we’ve a very good way of understanding issues, and getting in line with the drivers’ comments.

“At the end of the day we are the ones driving the car, and early on [last year] we felt like something was a bit off, and it took more time for the sensor to find out [what was wrong].

“So now all our processes are done in a way that we can operate quicker, faster, we know where to look, and I’ve every confidence we have a much better understanding of the situation. If it happens again then we can react quickly.”

“It’s always nice to have a good upgrade, but then you don’t focus on optimising what you know you have so I think we have a good baseline from winter testing,” added Grosjean.

“Obviously conditions are going to be quite different, different track, different layout, different temperatures, but the guys have been optimising everything we learned from winter testing, and that means we don’t have to focus on trying to get new parts to work.

“Over a few races we will see how it goes, see what more we can do on the car, but for now, we’re in a good place, hopefully, the car works well and we can have some fun.”

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ROMAIN GROSJEAN : WE HAVE TO BE REALISTIC – ROMAIN GROSJEAN : WE HAVE TO BE REALISTIC