Romain Grosjean was the only retirement from Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix, with the Frenchman suffering his sixth failure to finish in the opening twelve races of the 2019 Formula 1 season.
Starting inside the top ten after an impressive Qualifying performance on Saturday, the Haas F1 Team racer felt positive after the first stint on the soft Pirelli compound, holding his place inside the top ten, but a switch to the hard compound was ultimately the wrong call as he struggled to find any pace with them.
Grosjean felt the hard compound was not the tyre to use during the race at the Hungaroring, with the Frenchman unable to replicate the kind of speed he showed in the early stages of the afternoon, and he was outside the points and struggling for grip thanks to this tyre choice, only for a water pressure issue to ultimately curtail his afternoon early.
“I was happy with the beginning of the race,” said Grosjean. “The car felt okay on softs, I was holding everyone behind. That’s something we knew from the race pace and I was happy with that.
“Then we fitted the hard tyre, which we hadn’t really run over the weekend, and I think today you didn’t want to be on the hard tyre. There was no grip and it was impossible to warm them up.
“Ultimately we had a water pressure issue and had to retire the car anyway.”
Grosjean currently sits seventeenth in the Drivers’ Championship standings after the first half of the year, which has often been a struggle for both driver and team at times, with only three points finishes coming in the Spanish, Monaco and German Grand Prix.
