Grosjean gets all the luck for Haas in qualifying

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Haas F1's wildly fluctuating weekend continued on Saturday, with starkly contrasting good and bad fortunes for drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen.

Grosjean suffered a big accident in the final practice session. When he later made his first run in qualifying, he suffered a huge lock-up that left him scrambling to put a proper time together.

But not only did he escape the drop zone, he was then able to make it into the top ten shoot-out. He will start the Bahrain Grand Prix from ninth place, which he admitted was better than he could have expected.

"It’s been great to turn around the day as we did," he said. "We really struggled in FP3. I couldn’t feel the car.

"The guys did a great job setting it up for qualifying and the car felt much better from the first run in Q1.

"That was good and I’m very happy where we are," he added. "We’re in a great place to start the race. Last year we started P9 and finished fifth, so anything is possible."

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Unfortunately, Grosjean's good luck didn't brush off on team mate Kevin Magnussen. He will start from the back row after his final run in Q1 had to be abandoned due to yellow flags for Carlos Sainz' stationary Toro Ross.

"It’s bad luck," shrugged the Dane. "These things happen, but it’s always annoying. That’s how it is sometimes.

"We’ve just got to get up tomorrow and have a good race.

"We recovered as well as you can for qualifying," offered Haas team principal Guenther Steiner. "Romain qualified ninth, which at the moment if we have a good day is where we should be.

"Kevin was unlucky in Q1, again, with a double yellow.

"Last week it was Romain’s turn and today it was Kevin’s time, otherwise we were pretty confident he would’ve made it into Q2."

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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.