Romain Grosjean is confident the Haas F1 Team project will prove more successful and perennial than recent ill-fated Formula One ventures.
The Frenchman has left Lotus to join Gene Haas’ eponymous squad, which is set to enter the series next year and become the first new outfit since HRT, Caterham and Virgin joined F1 in 2010. Of the three most recent newcomers, only one is still competing, though Manor, formerly known as Virgin and Marussia, continues to scrape by at the back of the field.
Speaking to F1i’s Chris Medland in an exclusive interview, Grosjean is aware of the potential pitfalls but feels Haas’ different approach will be rewarded.
“[The project] can collapse, it can go down like a few teams have done,” he said. “I don’t believe it will, if I did I would not have signed. Risks are part of our lives and you always calculate them. Every time you change something it can go wrong but deep down I believe that it’s the right choice, the right goal and it’s going to be a great experience.
“The way that they work with the partnership with Ferrari is a very clever way of doing it; they have had a full year in the wind tunnel with no restrictions. There are a lot of sexy, appealing things in the project. I met [team principal] Guenther [Steiner] and [team owner] Gene [Haas] - I like them both - and everything was done in a week and a half.”
Haas’ special relationship with Maranello recently came under close scrutiny following a request from Mercedes to clarify their collaboration. The world champions wanted to know whether the two partners had been using a loophole in the regulations to circumvent the aerodynamic testing restrictions relating to wind tunnel time and computational fluid dynamics.
Although the FIA sided with the German manufacturer and plans on preventing similar associations in future, no sanction will be given to Ferrari nor Haas since the regulations were deemed too unclear in the first place.
Romain Grosjean exclusive: from Lotus to Haas
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