Grosjean: Haas gained respect in first year

Romain Grosjean believes Haas has gained the respect of personnel in the Formula One paddock during its debut season.

Haas made the most of a technical partnership with Ferrari to prepare itself for its first season in F1, and duly hit the ground running with a sixth place in Australia followed by fifth in Bahrain. While Grosjean is aware there is plenty for the team to improve upon, he says the way it performed in its first 12 months has convinced others it is a team with a bright future.

"We know where to work, we know where to improve," Grosjean said. "There’s been a lot of work going on already starting building next year’s car, all the parts. We had issues at the beginning of the year, with the front wing falling apart and so on. It’s all these things we don’t want to repeat.

"Now that the team has done one year, everyone has seen it’s stable, the financial side is good. We’re coming to the races, we’re committed. It’s not just a one-year thing. We’re going to have more and more engineers joining, which means we’re getting more experience and more performance."

And Grosjean reiterated his excitement for 2017 based on the room for improvement at Haas with a year's experience under its belt.

"There are lots of areas where we can improve, which is great. We’ve shown good performance with where we are. As I mentioned, the quality of the parts, the way we react to problems, the way we understand the tyres, the setups, the track, the demands, the way we operate the team, the pit stops, everything. It’s just an open book, which is great to us."

2016 driver ratings: 12-1

2016 driver ratings: 24-13

2016 team-by-team review: Part two

2016 team-by-team review: Part one

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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.