Romain Grosjean says he is much happier with the feeling of his car after switching back to Haas’s original aerodynamic specification from the start of the season.
However his day began in unfortunate circumstances when he spun on his way out of the pits, breaking the front wing on his Australia-spec VF-19. “It was just cold tyres and I switched off the pit limiter and I was surprised by the lack of grip and the car went,” he explained.Haas are trying to understand why they have struggled to make their tyres perform particularly over longer stints in recent races. Grosjean said the experiment with their old configuration gave some promising signs.
“We’re trying to evaluate everything and trying to understand everything we’ve done during the season,” he explained.
“The feeling on the car is good, really back to beginning of the season which I was happy with. Obviously there is performance missing because it is an old package but the feeling is good.
“There are limitations that we knew we would have. Some are with the wind and it was very windy today so we are paying a little bit of a price in that aspect.
“But for the team it is very interesting to look at all the data and try to understand the feeling of the drivers.”
Grosjean felt the tyre performance seemed better with the older aerodynamic specification.
“The pace was actually much better on the long run than the short run, which is positive,” he said.
“Obviously there’s a lot of tyre wear on the front-left like everyone else so it will be interesting on Sunday. But the feeling was quite good. Too much understeer, but quite good.”
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DAllein (@)
12th July 2019, 22:37
Hm… I think I’ve seen Ericsson lurking behind when Romain crashed… can’t be a coincidence.
DAllein (@)
12th July 2019, 22:41
Yeah-yeah, I know it’s cheap, but I will always remember Romain exactly for that hilarious case)
It’s like a Nickname… no way to dodge once it hits the spot)
Chaitanya
13th July 2019, 4:25
It never was Grosjean but his engineer who blamed Ericsson so its quite weird how Gorsjean gets the blame for blaming Ericsson for the crash.
Edvaldo
13th July 2019, 6:15
He said I THINK ERICSSON HIT ME on
the radio. It wasnt his engineer.
Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
13th July 2019, 7:27
it wan’t “hit me” it was “hit us” and i also don’t think it was grosjean… The voice sounded nothing like him. It sounded very calm like the engineers always do. Grosjean would have sounded totally different if it was him.
Icon
13th July 2019, 7:28
The actual quote was “I think Ericsson hit us”
It doesn’t even sound like him and has been debunked last year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/8fro80/grosjean_did_not_blame_marcus_ericsson/
anon
13th July 2019, 10:34
@thegianthogweed, it is one of those situations where, once the meme has become suitably established, people will keep repeating that meme even though it is in fact incorrect. The idea that Grosjean is a clumsy and foolish driver who blames others for his misfortunes has become a common trope of most publicity around the sport, irrespective of how accurate it is, so there is a tendency to look at things through that narrative lens.
That viewpoint makes it all the easier to accept the idea that Grosjean would say something like “I think Ericsson hit me”, because we are conditioned to think “of course he would try that sort of excuse to cover up his incompetence”. As you note, even though the voice and tone don’t fit, that preconditioning of Grosjean’s image is such that we end up both adjusting the message slightly and making the mental leap that it is him, even when the voice isn’t right, so as to fit our preconceptions of Grosjean.
Andy Bunting (@wildbiker)
13th July 2019, 6:11
RG aka CrashJean! You couldn’t make up most of his “errors”, if you tried!
This latest one takes the biscuit though!
Be a shocking cost, if you could add up all of the damaged F1 cars he’s bent…..
Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
13th July 2019, 7:49
Grosjean hasn’t crashed or been at fault when it really matters this year from what I remember. Magnussen has and has damaged the car much more. Despite the points difference, I don’t think Grosjean has been any worse than Magnussen. His luck has been the worst of any driver this season. Magnussen may have had much better results, but I think some of those races, Grosjean couldn’t get any because of issues causing retirement.
Grosjean certainly hasn’t been as bad as magnussen recently. From Monaco onwards, Magnussen has looked pretty poor or awful in every race. Grosjean hasn’t looked great but certainly better. Magnussen has been beaten twice recently by a williams. That says quite a lot about how bad he is and the car. Grosjean has been getting a bit more than that out of it at least. Even in france, Magnussen came out behind both Williams when he first pitted and despite being on new tyres, he took ages to get past them both. I do actually think that if Grosjean hadn’t suffered so many retirements and technical issues this season, he would have collected more points than Magnussen and quite possibly been considered the better of the two by many.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
13th July 2019, 12:11
fire this guy already.