Haas 'underprepared' admits Grosjean

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With less than two weeks to go before the start of the 2017 world championship, Romain Grosjean admits that Haas F1 is "underprepared" for the first race of the season in Australia.

But Grosjean added that Haas weren't the only team in that situation.

In fact, according to the Frenchman most teams would also be on the back foot. That's because of the tight turnaround between the end of pre-season testing in Spain, and first practice in Melbourne.

"You never feel totally prepared after testing and before you head to Australia," Grosjean admitted on Friday.

"We only have eight days [of pre-season testing] of which you only get four as a driver and one of those was the wet day I had last week," he pointed out.

"The big teams are ready, but for us there are still a few unknowns going to Melbourne. That’s the charm of Formula One.

"That said, I think we have some good ideas where we can improve the car and, hopefully, the updates we’re going to get in Australia will go our way."

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Grosjean completed 346 test laps at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. His new team mate Kevin Magnussen racked up 369 more, meaning Haas completed a total of 3328km in Spain.

"I think both myself and Kevin have identified where we can gain some performance," said Grosjean. "We have some good ideas of where we can improve the car.

"There is a lot more potential than we are using right now," he added. "The car does not feel too bad.

"Both drivers, we know pretty much and have identified where we can gain some quite easy performance."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.