Despite a poor result for the team at the season opener in Australia, Romain Grosjean still feels that the Haas car has a lot of potential. Grosjean even went as far as to say that he believed the car was faster than the Williams.
Unfortunately for the team, Grosjean’s day was ended prematurely by was appears to have been a water leak in the early stages of the Australian Grand Prix. In addition to investigating the mechanical issues on Grosjean’s car, the team will also be looking into the suspension failure that also retired Kevin Magnussen’s car in the final stint. Magnussen’s retirement didn’t impact his race result too much since he was already far behind after understeering into the Sauber of Marcus Ericsson on the first lap of the race.
Although he was disappointed by his own result today, Grosjean insists that the car has a lot of potential, highlighting that consistency will be important in the season:
“I suddenly lost a lot of power. I told the guys, then the next thing I knew I had to slow down the car. It’s a pretty disappointing result, but again, right now I’m hot and we’re all disappointed to lose a seventh-place position, but the car was there in qualifying in P6. The start wasn’t ideal, so we need to improve that. I felt I was faster than the Williams, so there’s huge potential in the car. I guess the key for us is to keep the momentum and get the consistency we didn’t have last year, where I’d be fifth in Bahrain then 19th in China. I really want to improve on that and get more consistency in terms of results. If we do that, then I’m sure there are going to be plenty of races where we can score good points. I’m feeling it right now, but tomorrow I’m going to wake up thinking, you know what, we’ve got a great car, so no matter what, we’re going to be there this year.”
Team Principal, Guenther Steiner, also agreed that the car was fast, as did Magnussen. However, the team will have a lot of work to do in the coming weeks ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix to sort out their reliability concerns and work for more consistent results.
