Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHaas F1 Team

Grosjean was willing Hulkenberg to beat him

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Romain Grosjean admits he was sat in his car wanting to be knocked out of Q2 by Nico Hulkenberg in order to have a better strategy for Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix.

Hulkenberg was the only driver to go out for a second run in Q2 in an attempt to get higher up the grid, with Grosjean in eighth place after the first runs and set to progress to Q3. However, Hulkenberg managed to beat the Haas and demote Grosjean to ninth, the final position where teams have free choice of tyres for the race.

With Grosjean also now having two new sets of supersoft tyres at his disposal compared to none for Hulkenberg. the Frenchman admits he was wanting to get eliminated by the Force India.

"I think P9 is the best position we could be right now," Grosjean said. "We could have had a go at trying again to get through to Q3 but there was no point in terms of tyre usage for the race tomorrow so we just sat there and I was actually hoping someone would overtake me and that I was going away from P8 to P9 which is a bit strange but it’s the way it is with the new tyres. I think we’ve unlocked some potential in the car but there is more to come in the next races.

“I saw [Hulkenberg] was late in sector one and I was like ‘Come on! Come on!’ Then sector two was good and I was actually happy. I was saying on the radio ‘Come on, just go for it. Put me P9’. It’s a bit of a shame because we would like to go out in qualifying and play for the best results but we know we have got a choice for a free tyre and that is what you want.”

However, Grosjean was keen to stress he is not a fan of a qualifying format which leaves him not wanting to start higher on the grid.

“Well sitting in the car for seven minutes waiting to be eliminated is not the way it should be. You want to see at the last minute cars going out on track and the classification changing like crazy and thinking ‘Oh is he going to make it or not?’”

REPORT: Hamilton pips Rosberg to Bahrain pole by 0.077s

AS IT HAPPENED: Bahrain Grand Prix qualifying

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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.