Haas F1 Team driver Romain Grosjean cited traffic and tyre problems as the main reasons for his and the American squad’s poor performance at the British Grand Prix on Sunday.
The Frenchman, who frequently experiences brake problems with the VF17, was suffering from tyre issues this time out. The Haas driver was unable to get either compound of tyre working as desired, and says he definitely felt a lack of pace compared to the strong performance he was able to achieve in qualifying the day before.
“Tough day in the office. We didn’t have much pace today with either tyre.
“I got stuck in traffic initially, which killed the super-soft, then I pitted for the softs and again, traffic all the way.”
A change in tactics at the end of the race also failed to have the desired result, and that left the Frenchman down the order in thirteenth place and out of the points at the end of the grand prix.
“We tried a gamble at the end putting new super-softs on, hoping that something would happen at the front, but nothing did.“
Having qualified in the top ten, Grosjean was expecting a relatively strong race with scoring points a definite possibility. On race day however, the performance from Saturday appeared to be gone, and the Frenchman struggled to get to grips with the VF17 throughout the duration of the event.
It was therefore a disappointing end to a positive weekend, and Grosjean would like to understand what went wrong.
“We just need to understand why our race pace wasn’t as good as it was in qualifying and go from there.”
