The Canadian Grand Prix has had its share of incidents relating to groundhogs or other animals – some have managed to hit them like Anthony Davidson in 2007 and some have escaped like Felipe Massa, Romain Grosjean and Sebastian Vettel in 2015.
That day Grosjean in his Lotus manage to escape, but it wasn’t to be during the FP2 session in the 2018’s grand prix weekend. For obvious reasons, the world feed didn’t broadcast the hit, but the Haas F1 Team tweeted Grosjean radio message.
The Frenchman stated that he had hit a ‘massive animal’ on the straight. Later on, they uploaded the picture of the impact it had on the front wing with the nose pretty damaged. Post session, Grosjean hugged it out with the groundhog mascot present in the paddock.
Prior to the start of the session, the world feed showed a resting groundhog/marmot at the side of the Formula 1 track. Meanwhile, focusing on the on-track action, the Frenchman had a decent run to finish seventh in FP2 as the best of the rest behind the Top 6 drivers.
“It’s been a pretty good day,” said Grosjean. “We had FP1 and we learned quite a bit about the new upgrade, then in FP2 the car behaved nicely. We tried all three different compounds between the two cars – there’s some more work to do, but it’s been encouraging. The new aero package does suit me pretty well.
“It’s an amazing circuit. I really like the feeling I get here. It’s not easy to find a balance, and the racing line is always changing. The grip is coming up during the weekend, but I really always enjoy driving here.
“Then at the end, unfortunately, an animal decided to cross the straight line. I did follow the advice – I didn’t steer to avoid it but, unfortunately, we had contact. It was high speed. I couldn’t do anything to avoid it.”
Team principal Guenther Steiner added: “We were unlucky – Romain hit some kind of animal, which cut short his session and did a lot of damage to the car.”