Romain Grosjean at a Renault PR event in Romania in 2009

Swiss Romain Grosjean races under a French licence, and joined Renault as test driver for 2008 after winning the 2007 Formula Three Euroseries. Grosjean had previously been one of the team’s Development Drivers.

Born April 17th, 1986 in Geneva, Switzerland (where motorsport was banned in the 1950s) Grosjean races under a French licence and won the 2003 Swiss Formula Renault series with ten wins from ten starts.

He then moved to French Formula Renault (SG Formula) and was seventh in 2004 (with one win) and champion in 2005 (10 wins). He also took two podiums in the Formula Renault Eurocup at Valencia.

Grosjean made his F3 debut at the blue riband Macau event at the end of the year – a demanding street circuit and not an ideal venue for a debut appearance. He took Loic Duval’s place in the Signature-Plus team, started 19th and finished ninth despite losing a several places on the first lap. He beat team mates Fabio Carbone and Guillaume Moreau and raced convincingly with many F3 regulars.

Stayed in the F3 Euroseries with Signature-Plus for 2006, the team hoping to recapture its form having switched from Opel to Mercedes engines. He ended the year 13th with only a single podium. But he also made an appearance in the British F3 event at Pau and won both races, from pole, setting fastest lap both times.

For 2007 he moved to the F3 Euroseries champions ASM, that steered Lewis Hamilton and Paul di Resta to victory in the last two seasons. He enjoyed little success in the two big F3 races of the year: he qualified on pole for the Masters of F3 race at Zolder, but stalled at the start and finished 14th, and was eighth in the Macau Grand Prix.

However he beat Sebastien Buemi to the F3 Euroseries title and bagged a testing role at Renault for 2008.

Over the winter of 2007/8 he became the inaugural GP2 Asia champion for ART, winning four times and beating Buemi with 61 points to 37.

He stayed with ART for the GP2 main series in 2008. He ended the year fourth overall win two wins – and lost a further two due to penalties. Switching to the Addax team for 2009, he won two of the first three races to take the lead of the championship, despite suffering a substantial crash in Monaco.

Grosjean cut his season short after Nelson Piquet Jnr was dropped by Renault and he was promoted to the F1 team in Piquet’s place, making his debut at the European Grand Prix.

He struggled to impress during his time with the team. Usually qualifying near the back and staying there, he only really distinguished himself when he crashed in practice at Singapore – in exactly the same place Piquet had during the infamous race 12 months earlier.

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Image (C) Renault / LAT