Haas driver insists "nothing personal" about his car criticisms
Monday 5 September 2016 09:11, UK
Romain Grosjean has defended his criticism of Haas' car over team radio, insisting he is just trying to help them improve.
The Frenchman's often-colourful descriptions of his VF-16 car's handling have become an increasing common feature of practice sessions.
And although some observers have suggested the nature of Grosjean's complaints could prove counterproductive, the 30-year-old insists there is a good atmosphere in the team and they are making progress.
"We are working as hard as we can and, yes, sometimes I'm complaining about a few things on the car but it's just to help everyone to improve and there is nothing personal in there," Grosjean told Sky Sports News HQ.
"To be fair, we are improving every race. The summer break was very good for us, and I was very happy with the car in Spa-Francorchamps. Hopefully I'll be very happy with the car here.
"We want to point fingers at things that go wrong because there are many of them and we want to sort all of them together to get some good results. Sometimes probably a bit too much, but it's part of racing."
Haas, F1's first American-owned team for 30 years, made a dream start to life in F1 with Grosjean's sixth and fifth places in the opening two rounds at one stage lifting them as high as fifth in the Constructors' Championship.
The going has proved tougher since then, with just one points finish in the last nine rounds, although the team were on the fringes of the top 10 throughout the Belgian GP last weekend.
Haas are set to decide their 2017 line-up this month and Grosjean is expecting his relationship with the team to continue for a second season.
"I'm pretty relaxed about it and pretty confident we're going to keep working together," said Grosjean, who has scored all of the squad's 28 points.
"Coming into Formula 1 is a huge project and you want some stability in there."
