Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHaas F1 Team

Grosjean confronted Ericsson over Turn 1 clash

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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.”

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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.