Romain Grosjean suffered with more braking issues during free practice at Suzuka on Friday, although his Haas F1 Team were able to work around the problems to give him some decent running.
Despite finding himself in the gravel trap at Degnes, Grosjean ended the first session fourteenth fastest and improved to thirteenth in the second session, and the Frenchman feels a couple of tenths of a second will make all the difference during qualifying on Saturday, and he hopes to be on the right side of those tenths.
“First off, this is always a great track to drive,” said Grosjean. “We have a lot of fun around here. Clearly, we had some issues with the brakes today, which didn’t make our life easy, but eventually we worked our way around it.
“We still have a lot of work to do tonight trying to balance the car. It’s one of those tracks where the timing is very tight. Two tenths of a second can make a big difference. Let’s hope we find those.”
Team-mate Esteban Gutierrez also had issues during the day as he finished both sessions in seventeenth, with the Mexican stopping on track during the second session with a turbo issue.
“It was quite a tricky day,” admitted Gutierrez. “We’ve been trying to experiment a little bit, trying to find the best compromise in every area of the car. We now have a pretty good idea. We tested a few things so we can get ready for tomorrow.
“Unfortunately, we ended up with a failure in the afternoon, but this will not harm us in continuing our program for Saturday and our focus on qualifying.”
