Guenther Steiner says he was extremely pleased with Romain Grosjean’s performance during Qualifying for the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix at Silverstone on Saturday, with the Frenchman set to start thirteenth on Sunday.
Steiner, the Team Principal of the Haas F1 Team, was delighted with the laps Grosjean did during Qualifying to escape Q1, and it gives them confidence heading into the race as the short run pace on Saturdays is usually where they are lacking.
“I’m actually pretty happy with our starting positions – starting thirteenth, it’s a pretty good place and we know we’ve got a decent race pace,” said Steiner.
“We’re really looking forward to going racing tomorrow with Romain (Grosjean) as there could be points out there to get. He did a fantastic job today to put those laps in, I take my hat off to him for that.”
Steiner said Kevin Magnussen’s struggles in the other car are being looked into as the Dane was eliminated at the first hurdle. He will start down in seventeenth after being uncomfortable with the handling of his VF-20 all weekend long.
“Kevin (Magnussen) has just struggled with the car all weekend, he hasn’t been comfortable and is lacking grip in every situation,” said Steiner. “We will look into this, to see what it is, and see if we can fix it.
“Hopefully we’ll get it fixed for the next race in Spain.”
“Nobody was unhappy about getting into Q2” – Romain Grosjean
Grosjean was pleased to get through to Q2 on Saturday, and the aim going forward should be to get both cars there. He also believes they should be okay when it comes to race day, with the team having prioritised its Sunday performance over the rest of the weekend.
“Nobody was unhappy about getting into Q2,” said Grosjean. “Obviously, that’s our target in qualifying, short-term. Mid-term we’ve got to be seeing both cars in there.
“We don’t have any updates coming so we just need to optimize the package that we have. That’s something we’ve done very well on my car since last weekend, I feel like we’ve improved a lot. The feeling in the car has come to me in a much better way.
“I’m obviously very happy with that, but we’ve got a lot more work to do. With our tyre choices and so on, we’ve prioritised the race, so we should be okay.”
“It’s been a terrible weekend for me so far” – Kevin Magnussen
Magnussen says the weekend at Silverstone so far has been ‘terrible’ as he struggled with the handling of his car. This has left him with very little confidence as he attacks the circuit and meant he was unable to escape Q1 like his team-mate.
It is particularly frustrating for the Dane as across last weekend’s British Grand Prix it did not feel as bad as it does this time around.
“It wasn’t quite enough all together this weekend,” said Magnussen. “It’s been a terrible weekend for me so far. I don’t know what’s going on with the car – it’s just been way off what I was able to achieve last week and how it felt then as well.
“It’s very surprising and it’s very frustrating to suddenly be in this situation where the car isn’t delivering what we know it can. We have to try and get to the bottom of that. It’s lost a lot of stability and I’ve been getting a lot of surprising snaps, I’ve got no confidence in the car compared to last week when I was really able to lean on it – especially through the high-speed stuff, of which there’s a lot here.
“We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
