Grosjean not suffering lack of confidence, insists Steiner

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Haas F1 team boss Guenther Steiner says that Romain Grosjean isn't downhearted or suffering from a lack of confidence after a run of accidents, mistakes and poor results in 2018.

Grosjean is yet to score a point this season. He was running in the top ten in Azerbaijan when he apparently flipped the wrong switch and spun into the wall while running behind the safety car.

He spun out at the start of the Spanish Grand Prix, and was handed a three-place penalty for Monaco as a result. Last time out on Canada he made it to the finish but was once again outside the points.

But Grosjean's spirits have been bolstered by the prospect of performing before his home fans this weekend, with the first French Grand Prix in a decade on the calendar.

“I think he got his confidence back after what happened in Barcelona and Baku," Steiner told reporters at Circuit Paul Ricard on Friday. "His competitiveness in Canada was good.

"I think he’s in good spirits after Canada. He’s very positive about the upgrade we brought to Canada, which we have here.

“He was very happy with the car, very comfortable with it," Steiner insisted. "Just the result wasn’t there.

Grosjean had been forced to start from the back row in Montreal after his turbo blew up in the first minute of qualifying. He fought back to finish in 12th place, just half a second off Toro Rosso's Pierre Gasly.

Haas expecting to put itself back on track in France

Steiner confirmed that there was no lasting damage from the blow-up and that there wouldn't be any grid penalties for Grosjean as a result.

“No damage to the turbo," he said. "[It was] oil which leaked into the cylinder and therefore the smoke came out. But no damage."

With Grosjean yet to score in 2018, all of Haas' 19 championship points have been earned by his team mate Kevin Magnussen, chiefly thanks to strong results for the Dane in Bahrain and Spain.

But that means Haas is down in eighth place in the constructors standings, far off where they were hoping to be at this point of the season.

“We shouldn’t be where we are, we’re fully conscious of this," admitted Stainer. "The car is competitive so we have no excuse on that side,” he said.

“We just need to get a race weekend with both cars in the points," he said. "We can make up points pretty quick if everything goes right.

"But nothing seems to be going right at the moment," he sighed.

Asked by reporters whether the team was looking to shake-up its driver line-up in 2019 in the face of its current disappointing form, Steiner said there would be no discussions on that topic until the summer break at the end of July.

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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.