A high in Austria quickly changed to a low in Britain for Haas F1 Team’s Romain Grosjean when he had double collision in the 2018 Formula 1 British Grand Prix.
Grosjean’s weekend started off on a bad note when he crashed out on Friday at Turn 1 due to the new DRS section at a high-speed corner. He did well in qualifying to finish inside the Top 10 with teammate Kevin Magnussen.
But it went wrong on the opening lap when at Turn 3, Grosjean made contact with Magnussen. Grosjean on the inside touched Magnussen on the outside just as Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton collided in front of him.
It was a wobble from Grosjean for which the Frenchman apologised but it severely compromised both their races with damage to their cars and positions lost. Magnussen managed to finish ninth after hefty fight with McLaren’s Fernando Alonso.
However, Grosjean’s day went from bad to worse after he crashed out with Renault’s Carlos Sainz in another moment when Grosjean had a twitch on the inside and bumped the rear of Sainz on the outside – the stewards deemed it as a racing incident.
Grosjean kept that incident out of the way, but felt the clash with Magnussen was a ‘negative’ of the weekend which shouldn’t have happened as the team once again lost crucial points in the battle for fourth position.
“I think that [Magnussen’s hit] is the big negative of the race that shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “We will look at everything we can and understand everything we can do better to avoid such incidents.
“Obviously, we have got the fourth fastest car on the grid and we are not managing to finish seventh and eighth, so I think that was the negative of the race. I think the race was compromised from that point.”
Grosjean is having a nightmare season having missed sure points on numerous occasions while his teammate has scored 39 points, scoring in six races so far. For now, Haas is backing Grosjean still, but Guenther Steiner admitted to being frustrated.
The Italian feels that the team is doing as much to give him a car which can score regular points, but they haven’t got the results they deserve which is hampering their fight against Renault who sits fourth with 70 points.
At the same time, Haas is fifth with 51 to its name but has Force India right behind on 49 and McLaren on 48. Team owner Gene Haas felt the move by Sainz was a difficult one for the Spaniard to make it stick in such a high-speed corner.
He admitted that Grosjean usually twitches around but added that he doesn’t do it with the intention of hitting anyone. “It looked like he [Sainz] was trying to pass him on the outside line which is always tricky,” he started.
“[I say this] because these cars don’t have a lot of speed between them, you have to do it really fast and I think he just took it a bit too long and they just kind of bumped into each other. It is hard to pass on the outside [anyways].
“And [also] Grosjean, he slides around a little bit [on the track], I don’t think he does it intentionally, but he’s driving right to the limit and unfortunately they collided and both took themselves out, so its just one of those racing incidents.”