Haas didn’t expect to suffer so much in China
After two ideal first Grand Prix, Haas F1 Team is in for a real treat this Friday. Both Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez failed to perform. The Mexican also experienced considerable reliability problems.
Romain Grosjean remained stuck in the second half of the time sheet and did not show the potential seen during the last two Grand Prix. He attributes this to the overly high tire pressures imposed by Pirelli, which, according to him, destabilized his car. “It’s not an ideal day for the team,” confirmed the Frenchman. “Esteban had a lot of problems. We were supposed to test the new front wing, but the track is very hard to understand. We didn’t manage to get everything working cleanly. The car is very difficult to drive. It’s not that easy.”
Could the rest of the weekend already be compromised for Grosjean? “At the moment, we are not at all where we think we could be. We need to understand this and work through it. Today we are struggling because we are a new team and we don’t have the data from previous years. We’ve tried a few different solutions, but nothing seems to be resolved at this time,” he stated, visibly pessimistic.
Esteban Gutierrez, already unlucky in Melbourne as in Sakhir, had even less success. Handicapped by multiple technical issues, he drove very little in the afternoon: “It was a very difficult day. It will be very important to analyze all the data tonight to fix the problems and prepare for tomorrow and the rest of the weekend. The team worked hard and I am confident. We are going to rectify the situation,” promised the Mexican.
