Romain Grosjean cut a frustrated figure after a wayward pair of Friday practice sessions for the Canadian Grand Prix, in which a brake-by-wire failure with his Haas F1 Team car sent him into a spin on three separate occasions.
The Frenchman was audibly irritated by his troubles over the radio, spending both sessions talking the ear off his race engineer as he sought improvement to his wayward car. His complaints continued after he stepped out of his ‘bucking bronco’ at the end of the session.
“Yes, [I was fed up] because I spun three times without understanding it,” he said. “Basically it was the brake-by-wire not responding as it should,” he told Motorsport.com.
“When you’re going on new tyres and you’re spinning, of course you’re going ‘what the hell is that?’ because I’m fed up of spinning – I’m not here to spin.”
Despite his brake issues, both Haas cars were firmly entrenched in the middle of the timesheets once again this weekend, and Grosjean feels they are not far off climbing further up the order in the midfield battle.
“It looks like there are some pretty tight lap times, not at the front, but from, I would say, Force India, ourselves, Toro Rosso and Renault are up there. It’s going to be key to find the last few tenths.”
Haas team principal Guenther Steiner echoed his driver’s sentiments, and was one of many paddock figures to comment on the condition of the circuit and its contribution to spins by various drivers aside from Grosjean.
“We struggled a little bit with a new set of brakes in the second part of FP1, but the guys got it back on track for FP2,” he explained. “There we got a good session in.”
“It seems to be quite slippery out there. Everybody’s a little bit spinning around between the wind and the dirty track.”
Grosjean ended up with 51 laps completed between the two sessions despite his brake issues, initially only going 14th quickest in FP1, before improving to 11th fastest in FP2.
