Grosjean in Q3 with a Haas “very close to the Melbourne version”

It's not a hallucination. The smile of Romain Grosjean (Haas) in the paddock of the Interlagos circuit (Brazil) on Saturday November 16 after qualifying, was not pretended. The Frenchman had achieved the eighth best time in the peloton, what's more with a machine almost identical to the one used at the first Grand Prix of the season in Australia!

“The car overall is very close to the version seen in Melbourne, he admitted. The guys on the team didn’t stop working, they can be very proud of it. It was a very long and complicated season. There F1 does not do justice to the extent of your work. But When there's a good day coming, I'm ready to seize it."

A cracking #Which for us! We qualify for the #BrazilGP in

P8 @RGrosjean 1:08.854
P10 @KevinMagnussen 1:09.037# HaasF1 #BrazilGP #Which pic.twitter.com/f23f6YKvHq

- Haas F1 Team (@ HaasF1Team) November 16, 2019

The day before, Romain Grosjean had announced the color by explaining that he had lived “(t)his best Friday in a long time.” in F1. “Since the start of the weekend, the timesheets did not reflect the work we were doing, in particular because of a problem in free practice.

But I knew we had the potential to fight for say 11th place. It would have been good because we could have chosen our set of tires for the race, all strategies would have been possible. 

Q1 was tough. It’s never an easy phase for my driving style, the way the car and the tires behave. So I adapted my behavior. Then in Q2, my second lap in Q2 was awesome. And in Q3, I was quite satisfied. »

The wearer of number 8 has started his turn in the wake of the future Dutch polesitter Max Verstappen. Oddly enough, it wasn't the best tactical choice. « I had the misfortune of following (Max) Verstappen. I benefited from the slipstream until the fourth corner, but in the middle sector, it stuck to me by two seconds! 

If the finish line was 10 meters earlier, I could have finished seventh in front of (Pierre) Gasly, but he had aspiration at the end of the lap. »

The icing on the cake, or rather heating blanket on the tire, Haas placed its two cars in the top 10 in qualifying for the first time since the Spanish Grand Prix early May, with Kevin Magnussen 10e. 

However, Romain Grosjean expects to suffer on Sunday (start of the race at 18:10 p.m. French time). “On paper, it looks difficult because our car works well on a fresh track, which will not be the case on Sunday. But I have plenty of engine maps to give power, I'm going to drive as well as possible. »