Romain Grosjean broke the record for the number of laps completed on a single day by a Haas F1 Team driver on Friday at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, with the Frenchman completing one hundred and eighty-one, breaking the previous record set by team-mate Kevin Magnussen from the day before by twenty-eight laps.
Grosjean ended the day fifth fastest with a best time of 1:18.412s, which was 1.191 seconds down on the pace set by Kimi Räikkönen at the front of the pack, and he feels the team can now look forward to the opening race of the season in Australia in two weeks time and have confidence of having strong pace.
“It’s been a long day, but it’s been brilliant,” said Grosjean. “We did a lot of work with the car, which is really good. I managed to get a lot of laps in on the last day, which we missed earlier on in the test.
“The team did a great job. We’ve got a lot of knowledge now for Melbourne. I’m looking forward to being there.”
Team principal Guenther Steiner felt the final two days of testing were extremely positive for Haas, with Grosjean’s one hundred and eighty-one laps adding to Magnussen’s one hundred and fifty-three laps on Thursday, and it means the team learned a great deal about their VF-18.
“I think we got as much out of the last two days as we could,” said Steiner. “Today, we got a race distance in during the morning and another one in the afternoon.
“That’s what you want. The more you run, the more you learn.”
