Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHaas F1 Team

Still ‘a big chunk’ Haas can improve - Grosjean

Romain Grosjean says Haas has yet to get near the full potential of its car and can still improve by “a big chunk” in the coming races.

The Frenchman scored a remarkable sixth place in the new team’s debut race at the Australian Grand Prix, holding of Nico Hulkenberg and Valtteri Bottas on a one-stop strategy. The result came despite a difficult pre-season and with little dry running completed on Friday in Melbourne, leading Grosjean to suggest there is a lot more to come from the Haas VF-16.

“[Melbourne] went better than expected, to be fair," Grosjean said. "It was a difficult weekend with the weather, and a tricky qualifying session for everyone. Sunday is the day you really want to perform, and we did very well.

"The car was reliable and it went to the end. The strategy was perfect. Since day one the car has shown huge potential. We showed that in Australia. With barely any setup work, we put it on the track and managed to hold on to sixth at the end of the grand prix.”

Asked how beneficial a dry weekend in Bahrain would be for Haas, Grosjean replied: “It would be very helpful.

"We need to get more running. We need to get more mileage and further our understanding of the car. We have a long list of things we want to try and do, and things to improve. It’s a lot of work but, on the other hand, it means we can improve the car by a big chunk. I always like to keep things positive. If we can do a lot of that in Bahrain, the car will improve and that means we can keep working on better results.”

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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.