Romain Grosjean went into the two-day post-Bahrain Grand Prix test looking to solve the reasons why the Haas F1 Team lost so much of their performance during the race last Sunday, and he felt they did make progress in that department.
Both the Frenchman and team-mate Kevin Magnussen had qualified inside the top ten on Saturday afternoon at the Sakhir International Circuit but Grosjean was the race’s first retirement due to floor damage, caused when Lance Stroll hit him on the exit of turn two, while his Danish team-mate fell from sixth to thirteenth at the chequered flag.
Despite unexpected rain affected part of Tuesday’s opening day, Grosjean said there were good ideas to take away from the running they did manage, and it would be up to the team to work even harder on day two to expand on those ideas.
“Surprising conditions today, we weren’t expecting to see rain in Bahrain,” said Grosjean on Tuesday. “We did what we wanted to in the morning, which is good. We had a program for the afternoon which we couldn’t get to due to the weather conditions.
“Clearly we want to understand why we were lacking pace in the race on Sunday, and to achieve that we need some dry weather. We’ve got some good ideas, some good test items, so that’s the plan.”
After Pietro Fittipaldi drove the VF-19 on Wednesday morning, Grosjean returned to the car in the afternoon, and he believes progress was made and a lot of data gathered that he hopes bodes well for the Chinese Grand Prix later this month.
“It’s been a good afternoon,” said Grosjean after Wednesday’s running. “We’ve gone through a lot of test items, obviously trying to understand our pace over the weekend. I think we made some progress.
“We’ve now got a lot of data to look at to prepare for China. Generally, I think it was a very good afternoon for us.”
