Grosjean puzzled by “horrible” handling despite third-fastest lap

Romain Grosjean said his Haas’s handling was “horrific” throughout the Spanish Grand Prix, despite setting the third-fastest lap time.

Having fallen to last place, Grosjean let several lapped cars past, then asked his engineer: “What’s the gap behind?” Told he had eight seconds to the next car, he backed off to give himself space to push for a flying lap.

“Are you OK?” his engineer asked. “Yeah, just going to go for fastest lap, it’s the only thing I’ve got left.”

Grosjean completed the race with his quickest lap, almost three seconds faster than he’d gone up to that point. That low-fuel run was 2.2 seconds slower than Valtteri Bottas managed, having also pitted for new tyres at the end of the race, and six tenths of a second slower than Lewis Hamilton’s best lap on older tyres.

Kevin Magnussen’s best time in the other Haas was slower than that of the 19 drivers who took the chequered flag having completed the race on older tyres.

“Sorry everyone, we had a really good start to the weekend, things didn’t go our way,” Grosjean told his team after taking the chequered flag.

Haas were puzzled by their loss of pace from Friday, when Grosjean placed in the top six during both practice sessions, to race day.

“From lap one to the last lap it was was horrible,” Grosjean told media after the race. “The car was absolutely a handful.

“I can’t understand what happened from Friday. On Friday the long run, short run, everything was fast, everything was competitive, everything was under control. And today was just not fun.”

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2020 F1 season

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• F1 revenues fell by $877 million in Covid-struck 2020 season
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