Grosjean hopeful of solutions after gloomy Friday

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As anyone who watched the television coverage of Friday's free practice sessions at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Romain Grosjean was not a happy man in the evening following chronic struggles with the handling of his Haas F1 VF-16 ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix.

Most worrying for Grosjean was the fact that so much seemed to have gone wrong in so many different set-up areas since the car's strikingly strong maidens outings in Melbourne in Bahrain, making it hard to know exactly how to start tackling the issues and get back going in the right direction.

"It wasn't a good day. We struggled with the balance. We struggled with the higher track temperatures," he sighed.

"It is unfortunately everywhere. It is not only one sector. Sector 3 is always the most tricky one, it's where there are the most corners and that is where you lose or gain the most lap time."

Grosjean's team mate Esteban Gutierrez was also left frustrated and angry after an electrical fault sidelined him for much of the afternoon. But after all the setbacks on Friday, Grosjean is now cautiously optimistic that the team knows what it needs to do next.

"I think we have understood now why things have gone that way," he said. "We revert on quite a few set-up changes that we have made in the last few races and the direction we have taken.

"If I look back we could have done things a bit different," he said of the team's approach in China and Russia where there too many unknown variables to allow the team to successfully address specific problems.

"It is just a general philosophy that we have taken since China and we thought was very positive but it doesn't work as we would like. On the paper it could be something very good but it looks like on track it doesn't work work as well as we would like."

By comparison Barcelona is a known factor thanks to winter testing, allowing the team to finally get to the root of the issues.

"Here we are at a track we know with very high track temperature so at least we know things are working properly but car doesn't feel right.

"Hopefully tomorrow is a different story," he stressed. "Now we have a bit of an explanation about why the car didn't suit me in the last two races, so hopefully tomorrow we get back to something I like."

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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.