Grosjean expecting to face a hard time on Sunday

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Romain Grosjean came into the weekend hoping that Haas had found a solution to its chronic braking issues. But the French driver admits that pretty much nothing is going right for him in Sochi.

“I’ve been very unhappy with the car since [Friday] morning," he said. "Something is just not working."

Haas tried changing brake component suppliers from Brembo to Carbone Industries on Friday in hopes that this might help. But the team opted to reverse that change for the rest of the race weekend.

"It was nothing in the brakes, it was just the car wasn’t doing anything I wanted," he said.

Grosjean ended up qualifying at the back of the grid on Saturday. However, he has been promoted one place to 19th as a result of a slew of engine penalties for McLaren's Stoffel Vandoorne.

Meanwhile Grosjean's team mate Kevin Magnussen will start from 13th place. The Dane has also gained a position, in this case for a race penalty for Toro Rosso's Carlos Sainz.

Vettel and Raikkonen lock out Sochi front row

"Kevin has been pretty happy with his car and I haven’t," sighed Grosjean, who pointed out that the team's qualifying effort had once again been affected by an incident on track.

"Today we had the yellow flags on my last lap while I was trying to improve," he explained.

The flags were for Jolyon Palmer, whose Renault had gone into the wall in turn 4. There were further yellow flags for a spin by Pascal Wehrlein's Sauber in the final sector.

"We need a solution for those yellow flags. Three races now we’ve had at least one Haas out because we get a yellow flag on our last attempt," he pointed out. "That’s a bit too much."

Grosjean isn't expecting his form or fortune to be any better on race day.

"I think tomorrow will be very hard," he sighed.

GALLERY: All the pictures from Saturday in Sochi

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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.