Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHaas F1 Team

Haas impressed by Grosjean's tenacity

Gene Haas says Romain Grosjean's tenacity will prove to be an important characteristic when he joins the team next year.

Grosjean will swap Lotus for the new Haas F1 Team in 2016, having been announced as one of its drivers at the end of September. Ahead of the United States Grand Prix weekend, team owner Gene Haas says Grosjean is a key addition and is impressed with the way he defends his position on track.

“When you’re sitting there dicing it up with the 10 or 15 cars that are right next to you, he holds his ground, doesn’t give up anything, and usually he’s able to pull ahead of whoever he’s with,” said Haas. “Those are the kind of attributes that for a driver are very, very important. Plus, he scores points.”

And Haas says he is already looking forward to the team's first home race next season as he hopes to further increase interest in F1 in America.

“As an American team, having an F1 race on American soil is incredibly important. In four months, we’ll be testing our car in Barcelona. In five months, we’ll be on the grid in Australia. A year from now, we’ll be racing in our home country, hopefully having scored some points and proving that we can hold our own with the established teams of Formula One.”

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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.