F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Narrow tyre windows 'ridiculous' - Grosjean

Haas F1's Romain Grosjean has attacked the narrow margin for tyre temperatures that he's experiencing with Pirelli's 2017 compounds.

The French driver said that this season's tyres needed to be kept within a four degree centigrade window to get the best out of them. Outside that range, performance drops off precipitously.

"It is actually really fun driving these cars when everything is working," he said. "But when it is not, it is not fun."

Grosjean went on to describe the problems he encountered getting the tyres 'switched on' properly in Monaco two weeks ago.

"During free practice I had no grip and never managed to get the front in the window," he recalled.

"It was like, 'This is not fun.' I am going into a corner and thinking, 'Am I really going to make it or hit the wall?'"

His first laps in qualifying on Saturday were just as fraught.

"I never had them in Q1, I didn't know where I was," he said, recalling how close he came to being eliminated in the first round.

Grosjean buoyed up by Haas' performance in Monaco

"I could see going up to Casino that I wasn't in the top ten, but I didn't know I was that bad," he admitted.

"The last lap it just got a bit better. Maybe the rears and the balance got better," he said.

"Then in Q2, eventually on my second set of tyres, I had a strong outlap. The tyres went in and we were straight away fast.

"I thought that was fun, now we are playing. It changed so much.

"Then in Q3, I pushed a bit too much on the rears and lost the rears," he shrugged. "The window was literally four degrees, which is ridiculous.

"On the data, it changed just 2-3 degrees. But feeling-wise, it is such a big difference. You can see the steering track, you can see the speed, you can see everything."

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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.