Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHaas F1 Team

Grosjean aiming for title with Haas move

©Jamey Price / James Moy Photography

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Romain Grosjean has said that he is sad to be leaving Lotus, but that joining Haas F1 represents his best chance of being able to win a title in Formula One in the future.

The 29-year-old Frenchman was speaking at a press conference on Tuesday at Kannapolis, North Carolina unveiling him as the new lead driver for the first American-owned team in the sport since 1986.

"I enjoyed my time at Enstone,” Grosjean said. “Ten years after from my first day I’ve achieved 80 Grands Prix, ten podiums and maybe there’s more to come before the end of the season.

"I know the guys very well, and it would have been easy to stay comfortable and stay there," he continued. "We’ve been the strongest group of people and it’s going to be very hard to say goodbye.

"My dream would be to become world champion with Enstone so maybe one day that can still happen.

"But in the end I want to try win races, win championships, and I felt coming here to Haas was a good step in a good direction to achieve that.

"From what I've seen so far, we should be able to run straight away without the problems for new teams, which was part of my reason for the decision," he added. "I think it will be really good to score a few points early in the season."

Grosjean said that the initial contact with team owner Gene Haas and team principal Guenther Steiner had come some time ago.

"I discovered the project a few years ago through the media and got to know a little bit more about what Gene and Guenther were doing and how it was nicely building up.

"I met Guenther, I met Gene, we spoke, they explained to me what the project was like. I believe that it's a new approach Formula One, an approach that works.

"I think it's an approach that can be pretty quickly successful and if we're racing in Formula One it's not to be last on the grid it's to try to always do our best as a team, as a driver, and what we like is to try to drink the champagne on the podium.

"So I like the idea with the partnership with Ferrari, I like the way everything has been going, I like the fact it's going slowly but nicely and as I said in the media recently I'm very happy that I made that decision."

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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.