Romain Grosjean struggled once again, as the underperforming VF-19 suffered more gremlins at Monza.
The Frenchman started thirteenth on the grid due to engine penalties of others but his race was compromised already at the beginning when contact forced the Haas F1 Team to take to the escape road at the Rettifilo chicane.
The slalom round the polystyrene blocks allowed him to re-join, albeit at the back of the pack. On the seventh lap and Grosjean spun whilst exiting the Ascari chicane and flatspoting his tyres, forcing the Haas pilot to pit immediately.
From thereon, it would be a lonely race before finishing in a disappointing sixteenth position. He described his race as “complicated” after another torrid weekend overall.
“It was very complicated today. I was hit from behind into turn one and it picked up the anti-stall,” Grosjean said.
“I had to pull the clutch, release the clutch, and by the time I had done all that I was driving through the polystyrene blocks and was dead last through the first corner. i tried to push to come back, then I had a spin at Ascari.
“I came into the pits and asked the team to remove a fair bit of aero balance, as the car was very much on the nose. We did it, but the car was still over balanced. We pitted again and removed one percent of aero balance, and the car was still over balanced.
“Definitely something went wrong with the car today. We need to analyse everything, the balance we had today was definitely not what we had during the rest of the weekend. A lot to do.”
The thirty-three year old remains in the Drivers’ Championship in seventeenth with only eight points, ten shy of his team-mate Kevin Magnussen.
