Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHaas F1 Team

Grosjean expects 'unbelievable' first day of testing

©Jamey Price / James Moy Photography

Romain Grosjean says it will be "unbelievable" to drive the first Haas F1 car on the opening day of pre-season testing.

The new team will make its track debut at the first test in Barcelona next week, with Grosjean having been selected as the driver who will be in the car on the first day. The Frenchman says he has settled in to the team quickly and is excited about the prospect of being the man to take the car out on track for the first time.

“I felt a very warm welcome from day one with Gene (Haas) and Guenther (Steiner) and from everyone I’ve met in the team," Grosjean said. "It’s a nice spirit. It’s an American spirit. Everyone wants to go racing. It’s very exciting, as it’s a new challenge. It’s going to be something unique having an American Formula One team on the grid for the first time in 30 years.

"Driving the car out of the garage on day one will be unbelievable. There’s a lot to look forward to. I already feel comfortable in the team. Everyone is motivated and wants to get to the first test, and then the first race.”

And Grosjean says the most important thing for Haas will be to get mileage under its belt as the new team attempts to gel at the circuit.

“The first thing for the test is to get the car to run and to work well from there. Hopefully, we can get a lot of mileage. This is a new team, so we need to get everyone to work together, all the engineers, mechanics and the drivers. We need to get as much data and knowledge as we can.

"It’s important to get the reliability sorted as early as possible because we don’t get much testing and we’re going straight to Melbourne.”

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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.