Germany – Performance of the French: big smiles for Pierre Gasly and Romain Grosjean

Pierre Gasly, 4th

Days follow one another but are not alike for Pierre Gasly. Yesterday, he was avoiding the press after a mistake that saw him crash into the wall at the end of the second free practice session. Today, he came with a big smile to share his impressions with the journalists present: “Today was a good day. Especially for the guys who had to work hard all night. It’s never nice to see them work so hard on a Friday night. So I’m happy to have qualified on the second row and thank them in my own way.”

Nevertheless, he did not lose sleep over it last night as he knows it was neither his first nor his last accident: When you play with the limits, it can happen. It’s just that it’s always annoying to lose laps on the track, give more work to the mechanics, or lose parts. He was therefore immediately comfortable at the wheel of his rebuilt car since it’s a configuration he had already used in the past.

However, he had a bit of a scare in Q1 when he found himself in 15th position with only a few seconds left in the session: « Yes, we didn’t have a good first lap. We failed to get the tires up to temperature, and we encountered a bit of traffic, which slowed us down. So it wasn’t ideal, but we were confident we had what it took to move forward. » Likewise, his best lap in Q3, where he was less than a tenth behind his teammate, was canceled because he exceeded the limits of the German track.

Now it’s just a matter of delivering in the race, where the weather could cause some disruption since we haven’t had a single drop of rain since the beginning of the season. As a true Norman, Pierre Gasly hopes for rain, especially since he only managed two short laps on medium tires yesterday.

Romain Grosjean, 6th

Sixth, here is a position that Romain Grosjean hadn’t occupied on the grid since… Melbourne. Precisely, it’s the car used in Melbourne that is now being used by the French driver since Silverstone in order to make a direct comparison with the developments made since then, which are being used on Kevin Magnussen’s car.

However, there’s still a bit of the unknown prevailing within the Haas garage as the car changes completely depending on the temperature. Given his teammate’s performance during the third practice session (5th), the Frenchman almost regretted advocating for a return to the Australian setup. He was therefore all the more satisfied after the qualifications: « In F1, 11 races is very long. It’s impressive that such an old car can achieve such a result. »

This raises questions about the philosophy that new packages are necessarily better than the previous ones: « It’s always tricky with upgrades. Honestly, in recent years, we’ve done very well with upgrades. It’s clear that something happened with the upgrades in Barcelona. As for the upgrades here, I can’t comment yet because I haven’t driven it yet. Kevin wasn’t clear yesterday, in one way or the other. »

It seems that the Haas is still very sensitive to track temperatures since the low morning temperatures were followed by warmer temperatures in the afternoon, and it significantly lost competitiveness. When asked about the issue, Kevin Magnussen exclaimed: “I have never felt such a change in the behavior of a car. This morning, I was flying. Even when I moved from the World Series to F1, I experienced less change in the car’s behavior!”

From our special correspondent in Hockenheim