Romain Grosjean plans to visit Jody Scheckter to see the original six-wheeled Tyrrell as Haas F1 Team boss Guenther Steiner confirms our weekend idea.
With Typhoon Hagibis hitting Japan during the Japanese GP, the whole F1 community had to spend the day indoors, when Grosjean decided to build a scale model of the six-wheeled Tyrrell P34, which was driven by 1979 champion Scheckter in 1976.
The Frenchman successfully managed to build it and uploaded the photo on his social media, which gathered a response from Scheckter himself, who invited Grosjean to visit his farm and compare his mode with the original he has.
“If you want to come see the original Tyrrell 6 wheeler to compare to yours, I’ve got it here on the farm,” wrote the South African. Grosjean liked the idea and now plans to visit Scheckter to see the original car when time permits.
“I’ll contact Jody and see if I can visit the original. It’s obviously a very special car with its history, and unique looking with its six wheels – not something you see often in F1,” said Grosjean. “I made the model to pass some time on Saturday.
“We knew it was going to be a long, rainy day. I was a bit surprised as to how many people liked the idea. I’ve been building models for a long time. I’ve built a few Formula One models, some LMP1, Super GT, rally cars.
“I think it’s a nice way to spend some time and it gets your brain somewhere else. I enjoyed the day building it.” With this weekend’s Mexico GP and US GP, a back-to-back weekend, Grosjean plans to spend time in Miami between the races.
Here it is, the finished product! 🙌
Proud as punch 😄#HaasF1 #JapaneseGP pic.twitter.com/1bCFhZd762
— MoneyGram Haas F1 Team (@HaasF1Team) October 12, 2019
Likewise teammate Kevin Magnussen has plans to visit NASA in between as per the team’s pre-weekend release. It also carried a note from Haas team boss Steiner, who hinted on the Friday change, which Ross Brawn talked about post-Japan.
Brawn stated that Saturday and Sunday is to remain as it is but Friday could be revised – whether from 2020 and or 2021, it is unclear. My proposal then was to remove Thursday and have the media activities on Friday morning along with scrutineering.
Then have two hours FP1 on Friday afternoon, followed by a one and a half hour FP2 – both practice sessions extended by half hour each to fill the void of a third session and lose only half hour from now. Post-that, my idea was to keep qualifying and races as it is.
The idea seems to be in plans as per Steiner, who confirmed about media activities likely to be held on Friday morning with a practice session in the afternoon. It remains unclear if they are discussing an extended practice session or keep two of the same time as it is now.
“There are talks to condense a Friday of a Grand Prix weekend,” said Steiner. “The talk is to just do running on a Friday afternoon, with all the other PR activities taking place in the morning. I think that would be a good way forward, especially with an extended calendar.”
Here’s the story where I talked about my proposed idea
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