Haas F1 trio look back on Romain Grosjean’s special run in Mugello as Ayao Komatsu expands on the moment, with few others chipping in.
For Grosjean, he did not see a good end to his F1 career due to the incident in Bahrain where he escaped death and burned his hands. Toto Wolff promised a run in Mercedes but it hasn’t happened till now. His former team Haas went ahead and undertook one last week in Mugello.
Due to its partnership with Toyota, Haas has been undertaking Testing Previous Car programme regularly, which included one in Fuji. With everything in place, the team checked with Grosjean, if he would be interested in a farewell run in one of the current cars.
Grosjean duly obliged and the test took place in Mugello which co-incided with Pirelli’s 2026 tyre test where Esteban Ocon and Oliver Bearman were present for the case. In addition, Haas also gave a run to former IndyCar driver and F1 TV pundit James Hinchcliffe, for a pre-race US GP feature.
It was emotional return for Grosjean as he summed up after the event. He was given standing ovation not just from the Haas crew but also Ferrari, Red Bull and Pirelli, who were present for their respective work. Here’s what the trio said along with bit on Hinchcliffe –
Esteban Ocon: “It was awesome. And, you know, we had most of our employees that were there. It was a big Haas family day. Everyone was there to witness Romain driving an F1 car five years after his accident in Bahrain. And it was a day full of happiness and emotions, really, and I’m glad to have been there to witness it all. Romain didn’t lose anything. He was straight away on pace. He knew everything on the steering wheel and everything, obviously, you know, it’s only been five years, but yeah, definitely a great day. And this team is very special in that sense — there are emotions. Obviously, we are a small team, but it’s really a big family. And even though it was five years ago, the team didn’t forget that Romain was there from the start, and that’s quite special.”
Oliver Bearman: “Yeah, I haven’t obviously spent a lot of time with him but I met Romain in Jeddah for the first real time. We spoke a bit and actually during the Mugello test, we had a lot of time to spend together because most of the time I was driving the day before him and he was driving the next day and we spent a lot of time waiting in the garage for the rain to stop, so we had a lot of time to talk together and share stories and also because Ayao and he, they’ve been working together since the very beginning. So, it was really cool to see him jump back in the car all those years later and honestly the character of Romain, he’s such a nice guy, so friendly, so open, I was really happy to see him get in the car and see his emotion driving the car again and honestly he did a great job as well which was not unexpected but it was really nice to see.
“I mean he spoke about, obviously we all saw his hands and that was basically the only injury that he had but what was really special was that he had to, he got to wear the helmet that he didn’t get to wear in Abu Dhabi of that year, so very special moment for him and I was very fortunate and I really enjoyed being there because on that day we weren’t necessarily forced to be there but both Esteban and I chose to enjoy that moment with Romain because it was something we all wanted to see and when he came into the pits for the last time all the teams and Pirelli and everything were giving him a standing ovation it was really cool.”
George Russell: “Yeah. I mean, obviously, for us who were sort of in the race and witnessing it, I still sort of remember it to this moment. Seeing the flames in my rearview mirror — extremely horrific to see. And I don’t think anybody wants to end their career in that way, so to see him get a chance to go back out — he’s obviously always been in great spirits ever since the incident. Of course, he was in — I can’t remember if it was Abu Dhabi or Bahrain — the following race, but he was there on the sidelines from the following race. You know, his spirits have never dropped. So yeah, nice for him and nice of Haas to give him the opportunity.”
Lando Norris: “Yeah. Good for him. I thought he was doing a test in a Mercedes. No? Was he not? I don’t know. But I guess nice for him and the team. They probably didn’t want it to end the way it did in some ways, or for those kind of things to happen. But he’s been racing since. For him to get back into a Formula 1 car, his dream, and kind of get back probably some good memories that he had was a nice thing for him. So nice to see it.”
Ayao Komatsu: “The whole thing was a highlight. No, it was really great. Obviously, nobody wanted that Bahrain to be his last time in F1 car. And then, we always wanted to do this, but until this year we had no opportunity, no capabilities to do it. So, this year we got the heritage team to run the TPC car. So, as soon as we had that capability, we spoke with Roman. Do you want to do it? Of course, he wanted to do it. And we wanted to do it in a proper high-speed circuit. And Mugello, it’s one of my favorite, his favorite. And then, in terms of his calendar, September work. So, yeah, I managed to make it happen, which was great. And then, obviously, it was raining all day. So, that’s really a shame. But then, Romain was just enjoying, smiling all day. I think we, myself and the other guy called Dom (Dominic Haines), chief engineer on the heritage team, we were a bit more stressed about, come on, when is this rain going to clear?
“Can we give him a dry tyre? But Romain was just smiling all day. So, I said to Dom, look, we shouldn’t be the ones stressing about it. That’s his day. He’s happy, so we should just chill out. It was great, really, really good. And then we managed to get some of his original crew, number one mechanic, composite guy. So, yeah, and then I was doing engineer. I was just talking to him on the radio. And then Dom, this guy, the heritage team, he used to be on Roman’s performance engineer. So, he was doing performance as well. But then, yeah, so that was great, really, really nice experience, nice to be able to do that and then show that we care. And then the whole team was uplifting. And then it just happened to be, well, not happened to be, we planned it. So, that day, Friday, we made it as a family day for our Italian colleagues based in Maranello, which is about an hour and a half away.
“So, again, without having that test car, it was not possible to do a family day in Italy with a running car. So, that’s the first time we managed to do it, the first time in 10 years. And then we had like, with families and kids and everybody, it’s like close to 500 people. And that was amazing. Then the day before, we had a miracle testing. So, both of our race drivers were there. So, they stayed overnight. We had Romain and two of our race drivers, that was a whole thing was really uplifting. And that’s what I feel like sometimes you need to bring the team together and then showcase who we are. We care about people. So, that was very, very nice.”
Komatsu (James Hinchcliffe’s run): “The thing is, we’ve got nothing to compare against. It was a very tricky condition he got in the car. And then he did well. Then finally, I think he had one run with slick tyres and he really enjoyed it. So, I think it was really nice for somebody like him to actually get in our car. And he understands exactly what the current generation Formula 1 car feels like.”
Here’s Oliver Bearman on Passenger Princess
Here’s Haas pair on Singapore GP
Here’s Romain Grosjean on test run with Haas