Romain Grosjean admitted he is still “very unhappy” with the balance of his car and was also frustrated by yellow flags in qualifying.
The Haas driver has been frustrated by the balance of his car all weekend. The team experimented with Carbone Industrie brakes on Friday, having also run them during the two-day Bahrain test last week, and reverted to Brembo hardware today. However Grosjean suspects his problem is not related to the brakes.
“Kevin [Magnussen] has been pretty happy with his car and I haven’t,” said Grosjean. “It was nothing in the brakes, it was just the car wasn’t doing anything I wanted.””
“I’ve been very unhappy with the car since yesterday morning,” Grosjean added. “Something is just not working.”
Grosjean ended qualifying in last position. However he was on course to improve his time when he was forced to abandon his final run due to separate incidents involving Pascal Wehrlein and Jolyon Palmer.
“We had the yellow flags on my last lap while I was trying to improve,” he explained. “We need a solution for those yellow flags.”
“Three races now we’ve had at least one Haas (car) out because we get a yellow flag on our last attempt, so that’s a bit too much.”
Grosjean will move up one place on the grid due to Stoffel Vandoorne’s penalty but he is pessimistic about his chances in the race. “I think tomorrow will be very hard,” he said.
Team principal Gunther Steiner said Grosjean’s starting position “doesn’t justify the speed” in the car. “Kevin was very close to at least 11th position, if not 10th, in Q2.”
AntoineDeParis (@antoine-de-paris)
29th April 2017, 15:46
dayyuumm, this man not less troubled than Alonso.
Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
29th April 2017, 16:04
In Indy Car, if you cause a red flag in qualifying, you are penalised your best time.
Maybe we need something similar to punish those who have ruined not just the final laps of those despirately looking to improve, but also have ruined the climax for the viewer?
Strontium (@strontium)
29th April 2017, 16:57
@eurobrun that’s not a bad idea, however it won’t solve the actual issue for the other drivers.
The real solution is, as @fer-no65 said below, to go out and get the laps in earlier. This isn’t a new thing in F1 and drivers often do two runs just in case something like this happens
Pat (@patcee)
29th April 2017, 16:08
Grosjean has become a real winger and whiner. It really is unpleasant for me to hear his radio comments. He seldom has anything positive to say about his car or his team. He doesn’t seem to give his team much in the way of techincal feed back in order to help them solve the problems with the car. I do wish that Steiner would have a quiet word with him and suggest that he winds his neck in a little bit. The car can’t be that bad as you rarely hear any complaints from Kmag.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
29th April 2017, 16:15
There’s a very easy solution to the yellow flag problem: do your runs earlier.
Going out as late as possible has its benefits but it’s also a risk. You take your chance. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. Don’t take that chance and you won’t let anything get in the way.
After all, the previous times Grosjean went out because of yellow flags, he just failed to do his first run properly. He nearly did it agian at Bahrain too, he locked very hard in turn 1 in his very first attempt in Q1. So…
GoodTimes
29th April 2017, 16:54
Grosjean probably has profited from a similar yellow flag situation earlier in his career and my guess is that he didn’t complain then. ☺
hunocsi (@hunocsi)
29th April 2017, 19:41
Crazy idea: how about one 60 minute session for qualifying without any breaks, where you can do 12 laps, best one on pole?
OmarRoncal - Go Seb!!! (@)
29th April 2017, 23:30
@hunocsi so then sponsors would hate you. Unluckily that’s the only reason why we have divided. But now that I think of it. It would be quite confusing, and if you had 20 cars running for an hour, I can’t imagine the big amount of complaints about being blocked.
hunocsi (@hunocsi)
30th April 2017, 13:27
@omarr-pepper I really don’t see the point of this current system, I feel it to be a bit of shambles. 60 minute uninterrupted would even allow an elimination-style system to be implemented if they want to spice things up, then we would really have time to follow everybody for at least one lap during qualifying while the action remains continuous.
Nunu
29th April 2017, 20:47
If you have a top ten car then set a decent time quickly – and wait with you second attemp – how hard can it be? MAG learnt this last race when Ericsson crashed and stole his attemp for a top ten when the yellow came up – and was saved by this procedure in Sochi…
Gabriel (@rethla)
29th April 2017, 23:37
Ericsson didnt crash last race.
John H (@john-h)
29th April 2017, 21:15
Grosjean moaning again? This isn’t news!
john.lee@outlook.ph
30th April 2017, 9:09
STOP COMPLAINING. You never deserved to be in F1 in the first place!