Romain Grosjean says he confronted Marcus Ericsson after the Chinese Grand Prix about his driving at the start of the race.
Going through the ever-tightening Turn 1, Grosjean was on the inside of Ericsson when the Sauber driver moved further across in front of the Haas. Grosjean took to the inside kerb to try and avoid contact but lost part of his front wing against Ericsson's right rear, needing to pit for a replacement at the end of the first lap.
"I know Ericsson was on the outside of Turn 1, I was on the inside, so he could carry more speed going in to Turn 2, but then I was there and he just turned in," Grosjean said. "I tried to turn in as much as I could, I literally had two wheels on the grass trying to avoid him but he just turned in.
“I went to see him after the race: ‘Oh I didn’t see you!’ I said: ‘Well come on, you passed all the way around the outside so how could you not see me?’
“I’m not so happy with that. We ran the spare front wing which was the updated version. [Started with the old version] because the updated version didn’t work as we wanted. So we did the whole race with the wing that is working a bit less good as well to make it easy!”
The incident added to a frustrating race as Grosjean finished 19th, with the Frenchman also citing an anomaly with the suspension set-up as hampering him throughout the weekend.
“There is one thing that we know wasn’t set-up properly. We discovered after qualifying so we couldn’t change it. What effect it has we still need to get more into the data.
"I asked my guys to check everything because it didn’t feel the same as it was before. I started winter testing and in Australia and always had a very good comment about the car but since Friday morning here I said ‘the car is not behaving properly’. So again it’s part of the process. We need to analyse everything, learn and find out.”
REPORT: Rosberg cruises home ahead of chaos in China
Chinese Grand Prix lap-by-lap as it happened
Eric Silbermann has breakfast with photographer Crispin Thruston
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
