Frenchman says Shanghai struggles have made Haas a better team
Thursday 28 April 2016 12:16, UK
Romain Grosjean has expressed his amazement at Haas's response to their first troubled F1 race weekend - and is tipping them to be back in points contention in Russia.
The sport's first American team in 30 years made a dream start to life in F1 with sixth and fifth place finishes in Australia and Bahrain respectively, but then suddenly struggled throughout the Chinese GP.
Grosjean, who was involved in contact on the opening lap, finished 18th in Shanghai and team-mate Esteban Gutierrez fared little better in 14th place.
However, with the team's disappointing performance having required deep analysis in the week that followed, Grosjean reckons they are now actually better placed to move forward.
"It was a very positive weekend for us [in retrospect] because we have done much more analysis after China than we did after Bahrain," he said on Thursday in Sochi.
"We could see real problems and understand why we were always on the back foot and understand why [the car] wasn't reacting to the next problems, and what we did right and wrong.
"I'm quite amazed by the reaction back at the factory with everything which has been done and put in place for here. I'm looking forward to getting back in the car and after a few laps [to see] we're back where we want it to be. Then we can work from there."
The Frenchman admits there were "quite a lot" of problems for the team to resolve after returning to base, with weekend-long tyre pressure problems in Shanghai having been "made worse by our set-up and the way we ran the car".
"It was as well the way we reacted to problems," Grosjean explained. "With disrupted sessions it was hard to catch up and the way we tried to catch up, and the direction we went, was sometimes not good and actually making the problems worse.
"So, all of that together, it's nice to now see it as a big picture and know that if it happens again we can ask the questions in a different way and react differently."
Nonetheless, Grosjean's impressive 18-point haul from the opening two rounds mean Haas remain fifth in the Constructors' Championship and the recently-turned 30-year-old is optimistic they can make an immediate return to top-10 contention this weekend.
"Back in the points is possible if we get everything back to how we want it and back to how it was initially in the season," he added.
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