Having scored points in the first two rounds of the Formula One season, the Haas F1 Team has been blessed with a massive reward for their efforts. Despite their form so far this season, they were only able to achieve one half of their goals for China.
Romain Grosjean wasn’t given the birthday gift of points in China, as his race was rather disappointing and resulted in P19 finish. His race was off to a bad start when he made contact with the Sauber of Marcus Ericsson and it was an uphill battle from there:
“It was a horrific race. The start was terrible when (Marcus) Ericsson turned into me and got my front wing. From there we had the safety car and I thought, ‘OK, we still have a chance to do something.’ But the balance in the car was nowhere near good. I don’t know what happened. Somehow, it’s positive that we had such a difficult race, because we can analyze what we did wrong, what we did right and what we could have done differently. From there, we can come back stronger. It’s a difficult one after the two first races. Not the birthday I was hoping for.”
On the other side of the garage, Esteban Gutiérrez was unlucky as well. The car’s drag reduction system was not functioning properly, making it difficult to overtake the competitors. The team had two goals heading into the weekend: to get both cars to the end of the race and finish within the points. Although the team didn’t manage to score any points, the team can take pride in getting both cars to the end for the first time in the season.
The team will be looking to improve on their results from this race in China at the Russian Grand Prix on the weekend of May 1. Guenther Steiner, the Team Prinicpal, is optimistic that the team can use the data from China to score some good results in Russia, saying: “I think we learned a lot this weekend, and all that we’ve learned we’ll take to Russia and see what we can do there.”
Weekend Summary: 2016 Chinese Grand Prix
Points for Haas are “a massive reward”
Haas Scores Points On Debut
