Romain Grosjean believes without his engine issue in qualifying he would have finished as high as seventh in his Haas F1 Team car at the Canadian Grand Prix.
The Frenchman who started twentieth after his engine blew up in qualifying fought his way back to twelfth, and was the last driver to make his first pit stop, doing so at the end of lap forty-eight.
Grosjean started on the Ultrasoft tyres and ran long into the race in a bid to move up the order, and he admitted he was unsure to just how far into the race he could take the purple-banded tyres.
“We didn’t really know quite how long we could go,” said Grosjean. “We had been planning to go long, but not as long as that.
“The tyres were holding quite nicely. There was only a bit of front degradation. I was happy with the pace. I was easily managing keeping up with the Renault in front and the Force India behind.”
Grosjean feels he could have qualified seventh and believes that’s where he would have finished in the race, however the Haas driver remains without a point this season and feels he was unlucky with all the blue flags which halted his charge.
“If qualifying had been as I was expecting with a P7, it would’ve been a P7 today, for sure,” said the Frenchman. “Anyway, we tried to come back, but our strategy didn’t quite work.
“When we came out of the pit we had a lot of blue flags and so on. I couldn’t really come back through the field. We did our best. The car is fast and I enjoyed driving it.”
