Grosjean impressed by performance in “old” Haas F1 car

Romain Grosjean says qualifying sixth on the grid for Formula 1’s German Grand Prix was “quite impressive” considering he was driving a car that is 11 races old.

In a bid to get on top of its recent struggles, Haas split its car set-ups for the second race weekend in a row as Grosjean continued with the Melbourne-spec VF-19, while teammate Kevin Magnussen ran an upgraded package at Hockenheim.

Grosjean recorded his best qualifying result since the season-opening Australian Grand Prix by securing sixth place on the grid in Germany, a second down on Lewis Hamilton’s pole-position winning effort.

“It’s been a good weekend up until now,” Grosjean said after making his third Q3 appearance of the 2019 campaign.

“Yesterday we were happy in the very hot conditions with something we wanted to check and to understand. The whole package seems to be working very well.

“Kevin is not so happy with his packages yesterday but this morning he was flying in the cooler conditions, so I was like ‘maybe I should have gone for the new car’, and then in qualifying it seems like it was more equal. In the midfield it was like four-hundredths separating four cars, which is quite exciting.

“Then Q3 I got the best out of the car, it’s quite impressive that a car that is that old, it’s not old in general but in F1 11 races is a long, long time and it’s still capable of delivering such a strong result so it shows that we know which is the quicker car.

“Now we just need to understand what the difference is between the two packages and why Kevin was so competitive this morning and maybe lost some of that competitiveness. Maybe the fresh track was not so good on my car, and the warmer one it got better.”

Earlier this season, Haas’ drivers were able to put in strong qualifying performances only to fall away over a race distance due to its ongoing tyre struggles.

Asked about his expectations for Sunday’s given Haas’ inconsistencies this year, Grosjean replied: "That is a possibility. It could also go well also.

“Yesterday the long run pace was OK, not outstanding, but OK and I think we made the wrong set-up choices yesterday in trying different things.

“We tried more on Friday than we were able to try more in the whole year, because with the Australian package I can just go on track and feel confident.

“From the first lap I was on target and just building and knowing what’s happening. Is it the case on the race 11 package, the brand new one, it is something that we will have to figure out.

“But we tested a lot of things in the long runs and some worked and some didn’t work so well. First we have to see the weather tomorrow but we could be alright.”