Romain Grosjean admitted he was unsure to how and why he crashed out of qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix, after losing control of his Haas F1 Team car at turn five and hitting the barriers.
The Frenchman caused a red flag that compromised a number of drivers who were looking to improve on their lap time, but his crash ended his chances of following team-mate Kevin Magnussen through into the second segment of qualifying.
Grosjean felt the pace of the car was strong enough to make it through into Qualifying 2, but the crash ended his chances, and he admitted that once the car got away from him, there was nothing he could do to stop it hitting the tyre wall.
“I’m OK. The first run was actually really good,” said Grosjean. “I had a big moment into turn 11, which lost me a lot of time on Kevin. So, I think the car was capable of going into the top-10 in Q1.
“I went for the second run, doing pretty much the same thing, and the car just had a lot of oversteer for no reason. We need to analyze that. For sure, I attacked turn three a bit faster than I had on the previous lap, but nothing crazy.
“I just lost it there and tried to save what I could for turn four, but it was too late. I tried to keep it on track as much as I could, to avoid a crash, but I lost it a second time and had to go wide. Once I was on the grass, it was wet, so it threw me into the barrier.”
