Romain Grosjean, Haas, Monza, 2018

Renault lodges protest against Grosjean

2018 Italian Grand Prix

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Renault has lodged a protest the legality of Romain Grosjean’s Haas following his sixth-place finish in the Italian Grand Prix.

The protest concerns the legality of Grosjean’s car. Renault said in a statement it has “submitted a request to the stewards of the event for clarification on the legality of the Haas F1 Team VF-18”.

FIA race director Charlie Whiting said the protest is “concerning a small detail on the leading edge of the floor”. He added the protest is not about the flexibility of the floor. “It’s a geometric issue,” he said.

RaceFans understands the floor of the car is the focus of Renault’s objections.

Haas and Grosjean have been summoned to the stewards. A hearing into the matter will begin at 6:30pm local time.

Carlos Sainz Jnr finished ninth for Renault and team mate Nico Hulkenberg was 14th. The result left Haas level with Renault on 84 points in the championship standings.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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16 comments on “Renault lodges protest against Grosjean”

  1. No explanation for the protest has been given.

    Lol

  2. I didn’t see this coming at all. It’d be interesting to know what exactly they think Grosjean or his team have done.

    1. @jerejj, the fact that they are challenging the legality of the car suggests that it is related to something that Haas have done rather than just specifically Grosjean – it’ll be interesting to see what exactly they are challenging.

    2. It’s in the article….

      1. It is now after an update.

  3. Illegal car then?…

  4. Haas fitted a new floor this race, so perhaps that’s it?

    1. The cars have to pass scrutineering before every race so I would have thought that if there was something illegal with the new floor it would have been picked up then. How did the Renault engineers get so close that they could inspect the floor in such minute detail? Alternatively, the illegality was so obvious that it could be seen by the casual observer which leads me back to my first point. Of course one could say that Cyril is simply having a bad day.

      1. @angie, it is something that has happened in the past though – for example, in 2011 Sauber had both of their cars disqualified from the Australian GP because, in post race checks, it was found that the rear wing upper flap wasn’t the right curvature.

        The issue is also that the teams do sometimes change the specification of some of their components during the race weekend – we’ve seen teams sometimes run a different configuration in the practise sessions to what they use in the race, which is also part of the reason for the post-race checks that the stewards carry out.

        As for how the engineers could have seen it, I don’t think it would be too hard – for a start, since the teams are not allowed to screen the garages during the race weekend, a professional photographer who has a camera with a decent zoom lens could have taken photos whilst the floor was being fitted. They could also have looked at the car in parc ferme after qualifying, or whilst the car was on the grid – there could have been quite a few opportunities for the team to have seen it in the normal operating circumstances of the grid.

      2. @angie

        Spying. Which is a 100 million euro fine. Will be interested in the outcome.

  5. Hm.. We need to keep on eye on this because if that’s related to the Ferrari engine, then we might have some fireworks coming out in the succeeding weeks.

  6. sore losers.. multi million outfit with WC aspirations, lost a important place to small private team.

    1. Small private team with a car developed by the giant Fiat company

      1. You at least should know that’s not true.
        They buy every allowed part but the design of the car is of their own and build by Dallara.

  7. Ted Kravitz said during his post race notebook on Sky that it’s been something Renault haven’t been happy about for a while & that they have seen something this weekend that makes them believe it’s the right time to put in the protest.

  8. Renault trying to unmelt the advantage they had over Haas.

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