Haas: a day to remember
Behind the battle for the championship lead between Rosberg and Hamilton, the spotlight was also on the home team in Austin. Unfortunately, the Haas F1 Team's enthusiasm and good spirits were soon marred by technical problems during the first tests...

For the start of his hundredth weekend as a Formula 1 driver, Romain Grosjean experienced his share of difficulties, a situation that has unfortunately become recurrent lately.
« This is not a positive day for us, as we were victims of technical problems with the car. »
This was even more apparent in the standings: 14th in FP1, the Frenchman dropped to 18th place in the FP2 standings, while all the competitors had put on the super-soft tires this time.
But despite these unenthusiastic remarks, the driver was still pleased with one thing:
« The balance wasn’t so bad, but we couldn’t derive the performance from it. »
Last night’s evening was expected to be a studious one for the former Lotus driver, particularly in analyzing the data obtained; with the aim of making better use of the tires.
« There will be a lot of work tonight. Looking at the data, we need to try to get the best out of the tires. »
However, like all the other drivers, the Geneva native was looking forward to driving his single-seater on this track, while hoping to gradually clear his slate of troubles.
« It’s a nice layout, but we didn’t manage to get everything going in the right direction. Hopefully, we’ll be able to sort everything out for the third session. »
In unison, his teammate Esteban Gutiérrez did not have a better day. Indeed, he lost time and parts of his car directly on the Texas circuit! These debris even caused the red flag to be shown around the middle of the second session on Friday.
On a personal level, everything naturally went wrong from that moment on.
« I had an issue with aerodynamic parts. It disrupted our program because the car went out of tune. »
After investigation, it appears that abnormal vibrations on the Haas VF-16 are the cause.
Like his teammate, Esteban Gutiérrez and his mechanics expected to work late into the evening to try to resolve all the difficulties in order to optimize their car as much as possible.
Thus, Günther Steiner perfectly summed up the initial sessions of his men’s performance, which was far from brilliant!
« This is not a great first outing for us here. We had a series of small problems. When that happens, your testing program is compromised and the data you collect is not good. We will continue to work and try to be as ready as possible for tomorrow. »