Romain Grosjean will take Nelson Piquet Jnr’s place in the second Renault at this weekend’s European Grand Prix.
The identity of Fernando Alonso’s new team mate will not come as a surprise to many – Grosjean was linked to the seat as early as April 2008.
Grosjean was born in Geneva, Switzerland and holds dual French-Swiss nationality. He is currently second in the GP2 championship behind Nico H?â??lkenberg. He will relinquish his place at the Barwa Addax team to Davide Valsecchi.
He is the ninth GP2 racer to reach F1, joining Scott Speed, Nico Rosberg, Heikki Kovalainen, Lewis Hamilton, Kazuki Nakajima, Nelson Piquet Jnr, Timo Glock and Sebastien Buemi. (More on them here).
After Piquet’s stinging words of criticism about Flavio Briatore, Grosjean’s progress will be watched very closely to see if he suffers from the same lack of support Piquet complained of. Do you think he will thrive at Renault – or is he another lamb to the slaughter?
More on Romain Grosjean
- Romain Grosjean biography
- Romain Grosjean vaults into barrier in huge crash in Monaco GP2 race (Video)
Sush Meerkat
18th August 2009, 18:31
Quid Pro Quo Clarice.
Selidor
18th August 2009, 22:01
I like my drivers with Fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Smitty
18th August 2009, 23:42
It puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again.
Sush Meerkat
19th August 2009, 19:33
with Flavio beans and a nice chianti?
*starts slurping like a madman*
TommyB
18th August 2009, 18:45
Why on earth did this take so long?
Becken
18th August 2009, 21:11
Hi, Tommy. I´m disappointed now. Why did you change your avatar?
TommyB
19th August 2009, 1:38
Because I didn’t like the pink parasol! LOL
Dorian
18th August 2009, 18:45
LOL….Sush Meerkat
Steph90
18th August 2009, 18:53
Even with his Monaco crash this year he’s shown he’s a winner now he needs to show some of that form in f1.
Great pics again Keith! Though I doubt Piquet was really smiling in the photo with Grosjean’s arm around him after so many months of rumours that he would was going to get his seat:P
S Hughes
18th August 2009, 19:00
Grosjean will get more support from Briatore than Piquet did just to disprove Piquet’s accusations. We’ll see how he does next to Alonso though.
Dorian
18th August 2009, 19:04
Agreed
gabal
18th August 2009, 19:14
As seen in GP2 he can be really fast but he can also struggle a lot – Nico Hulkenberg and his team-mate Vitaliy Petrov showed much more consistant results – the way the season started it looked like he would dominate the championship but faded away after Monaco…
I don’t think he can do worse then Piquet and I think Flavio will give him at least 2010 season to prove himself…
Ned Flanders
18th August 2009, 19:53
Swiss drivers are like London buses… you wait ages for one then two come along at once.
I don’t hold too much hope for Grosjean. Look at all of Alonso’s teammates at Renault- Trulli, Villeneuve (easy to forget he ever drove for Renault), Fisichella, Piquet- did it do any of their careers any good? Not really. Renault, even years ago as Benetton, have proved incapable of running two equal cars.
Baz
18th August 2009, 20:20
Is that Routemaster or Bendy bus?
F1Driver
18th August 2009, 20:06
Nowhere nea as goo looking as Piquet.
Personally i think they should have just stuck with the above mentioned, imo he was doing alright considering where he was…
MN
19th August 2009, 11:04
Have to agree with that. All the hype and a long in GP2 and still can’t get near the title.
Max should resign now!!!
18th August 2009, 20:39
Lamb
Snoopy
18th August 2009, 21:14
Unfortunatelly a seat next to Alonso is same kind of place like seat next to Schumacher…no chance.
If new driver take it in right way, means try learn as much as possible its perfect place. But not stay there years because then it will be other Barrichello story.
In other hand NOBODY can do worse than Piquet. I can not understand that he can blame team boss about his own mistakes, is driving skills was crap…and i dont menat speed but car handdle skill. Half of time he was out of track by his own fault.
Smitty
18th August 2009, 23:44
Hamilton would beg to defer.
lynnduffy
19th August 2009, 0:22
Differ, maybe…. wasn’t the whole problem that he *didn’t* defer to Nando? I don’t think deference is in Lewis’ vocabulary.
Good luck to Grosjean: he’s going to need it. Even though I’m sure he’s better than Piquet.
alan
18th August 2009, 21:31
Agreed a seat next too an experienced ex world champion usually means second class treatment – but maybe flavio is going the old ron dennis way?? – lets see – ps it is strange that ban was lifted and such a tiny fine
French frog
18th August 2009, 21:56
Grosjean has the chance to be French although born in Switzerland (his mother is French). Renault and in particular Carlos Ghosn will pay surely more attention to its treatment.
After Bourdais was banned for lack of results, the french fans have a lot of expectations in Grosjean and of course in Renault. So the second seat is perhaps not as bad as it can look.
Tengil
18th August 2009, 23:17
Grosjean has been a favourite of mine for while now and I hope he doesn’t play it safe but rather goes for it!
Ronman
19th August 2009, 7:23
too many comments too little time, but my question is this… has he made the same mistake and picked Flavio as his “executioner” oops i mean manager? can’t believe i said that out loud….
I never liked Flavio….
PJA
19th August 2009, 9:40
If Briatore and Renault know that Alonso is leaving the team at the end of the season I could see them grooming Grosjean as his replacement so he would get more support than Piquet. This could also have been an extra motivation to change drivers half way through the season even with the testing ban, so at least one of their 2010 drivers had race experience with the team rather than change both drivers at the end of the season.
If Alonso is staying at Renault then I think Grosjean will have to get used to been the No.2 driver.
Either way his and the teams expectations shouldn’t be too high for this season at least.
By the way does anyone know if he did any pre-season testing in the R29 at all?