Romain Grosjean was frustrated by the Sauber drivers on his way to 11th place in the Chinese Grand Prix.
The Haas driver, who yesterday criticised the penalty he received for failing to slow sufficiently for Antonio Giovinazzi’s crash during qualifying, lost more time in the race today because of the rookie driver.
Grosjean accused the other Sauber driver of costing him more time by failing to keep pace with the pack during the Safety Car period.
“Then [Marcus] Ericsson at the restart left miles ahead of the car in front of me. I don’t know what he was doing, so I was already on the back foot.”
Having started 19th, Grosjean endured a difficult race in the midfield and picked up damage. “[Esteban] Ocon pushed me on the first lap. I lost half of the right-hand side of the car. From there I just pushed as hard as I could.”
“I couldn’t really find an opening on Jolyon [Palmer]. Once I did, though, I had some good lap times. We were doing a decent job, but it was already too late.”
Team principal Guenther driver said it has been a “challenging weekend” for his driver.
“In Australia it was Kevin’s turn to have a challenging weekend and here it was Romain, though he wasn’t lucky in Australia either. Again, I think we showed what we can do and that we are what we think we are.”
PorscheF1 (@xtwl)
9th April 2017, 11:32
I honestly feel Haas is in better shape than their current results suggest, even better than Force India.
kanan
9th April 2017, 12:30
Possible even better than Williams?
Raveendhana
9th April 2017, 17:57
Being better than is different from making the results happen in your favour so in that case haas needs to learn a lot. Even though there was reliability issues for them lately. Williams how much ever a good team they are they seems to choose the wrong driver pair lately. And force India are good at developing their car in_ season eg vjm09 B
@F1-liners (@f1-liners)
9th April 2017, 11:40
The whole purpose of the SC is to create a queue behind it.
How could there be such big gaps?
e.g. enough space for RIC to do a pit stop without losing a position!
Joao (@johnmilk)
9th April 2017, 12:39
That intrigued me as well. A lot of gaps. They had to go through the pits and there is a max speed that they are allowed to do, in that case they can’t catch up, but still, the SC was right at the beginning of the race, surely there wasn’t a lot of space between them.
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
10th April 2017, 9:43
Cars are allowed a gap of up to 10 car lengths between themselves and the next car. So although it’s usually to a driver’s advantage to be within 2 car lengths due to better overtaking position, there can be considerable differences in gap. Romain’s complaint here is probably more “What kind of lousy driving was that?” than “Why didn’t the stewards intervene?”
Friederike (@rike)
9th April 2017, 12:05
Shame he didn’t make it into the points, really liked his performance today
Schudha
9th April 2017, 14:07
Grosjean is such a sound driver. I hope he gets some luck with a top drive.
dex022 (@dex022)
9th April 2017, 14:13
Grosjean must have forgotten SPA 2012 where he cause massive crash at start de facto cost Alonso his 3rd title by knocking him out of race and almost decapitating him. How time flies when Grosjean gets to complain about someone that crashed only himself not 5-6 other cars in process. I think he should really shut up.
Gabriel (@rethla)
9th April 2017, 14:19
Is he still whining about his penalty for disregarding safety. It feels bittersweet that its him of all who suffered most from Giovinazzis crash.
bret
11th April 2017, 15:33
NO, the reporter is!
Rik
9th April 2017, 16:28
Once again F1 has let down one of its teams one of its drivers and all of its fans. Get it together. This was supposed to be a new era of F1 racing but are still seeing the same old same old, that is very poor officiating with the effect of unfair results .
WE all saw the gaps behind the safety car and questioned what was happening . Why did not race control do something ? Were they the only ones NOT watching ?
Why can’t they get their house in order ?
I know all sports have officiating issues but, when you have so many cameras and all the time needed to fix the problems not doing so means that you really don’t care to fix them.
The answer ? Watch other forms of racing . Sooner or later F1 will look at the numbers and finally look at themselves.
Today I’ll watch the Indycar race . They are not perfect but in terms of fairness and competition they outclass F1
Ferrari, Seb fan
9th April 2017, 18:04
I don’t really see why he should be frustrating by Giovinazzi. He is only a rookie anyway. During the safety car period there were a lot of gaps but I didn’t hear anyone else complaining.
Jonas Karlsson (@orchide)
9th April 2017, 19:22
Typically Grosjean. He’s complaining about something all the time.
Can’t stand that guy.
Nunu
9th April 2017, 21:01
Nice to see MAG is back… strong race by him – and his (& the teams) first points… job well done
Kash
10th April 2017, 14:46
Someone please remind this guy of his early antics in F1. Guess he forgot he was banned for a race coz of his collisions.