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Haas can't offer Grosjean 'last good day of fun' in F1 car

Haas team boss Guenther Steiner says the US outfit has the cars but not the engines to allow it to offer Romain Grosjean a farewell test and "one last good day of fun" in an F1 car.

Grosjean's career in F1 ended abruptly at Sakhir two weeks ago when the Frenchman suffered a horrifying crash on the opening lap of the Bahrain GP.

While Grosjean miraculously escaped the dramatic crash, minor burns to the back of his hands have prevented the 34-year-old from enjoying a swansong outing in Formula 1 this weekend in Abu Dhabi.

But Grosjean hopes that in the future he'll be able to run a few laps onboard an F1 car and enjoy a proper send off.

Unfortunately, Haas isn't materially in a position to offer its departed driver a private test.

"We have got plenty of old cars, but they have no engine in it, so we cannot do that unfortunately," Steiner told Autosport.

"Maybe in the future we’ve got something, I don’t know. But at the moment, I couldn’t make that promise."

Last week, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff generously offered to provide Grosjean with an F1 test if either Haas or Renault, the teams historically affiliated with the Frenchman, cannot do it.

But Steiner also sees Ferrari as a possible option for Grosjean.

"It’s more likely to able to talk to Ferrari to have him drive one of their older cars when they do an event or something," said the Italian. "That is for sure possible to do.

"I think that is the easier solution than us preparing a car, because they have got the department which is doing that stuff for customers. We don’t have these resources at the moment.

"But if he wants to do it, I’ll let him heal up completely, and then we’ll see what he wants to do and what he’s able to do.

"Then we’ll decide if he can make a good day of fun out of it, the last day in an F1 car for him."

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Michael Delaney

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