‘You don’t expect Grosjean’s crash from a rookie’

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Romain Grosjean

With Romain Grosjean suffering the embarrassment of crashing behind the Safety Car, Guenther Steiner says one wouldn’t even expect such a crash even from a rookie driver.

Grosjean threw away a points-scoring result in Azerbaijan last Sunday when he crashed his Haas while weaving behind the Safety Car.

Grosjean admitted it was his mistake as he accidentally “bumped” a switch as he was warming his tyres.

That, though, hasn’t exactly earned him points with his team boss.

Steiner said: “You don’t expect from a rookie or anybody.

“I think we are not using the potential of the car to get in the points. We should be quite well up there because the car is performing very well.

“In the race we saw we started last and were P8 with Romain behind Perez.

“That was on speed because everybody had one stop so there was nothing.

“Sure the Safety Car comes out and we are in P6 all of a sudden but then we go home with nothing.”

Grosjean’s DNF means Haas have scored just 11 points in four grands prix with Steiner revealing there are times it feels like they keep letting it slip from their grasp.

“You’ve just got to tell people that you haven’t done anything wrong. It’s not your fault that Romain went in the wall, we did a good job, we did good pit stops, we prepared the car well.

“The whole weekend, until qualifying started, was very well executed, we had no down time with the car and we did a lot of good things. The guys know themselves if they are good or not.

“Until you get the momentum going assure them they are doing good. They keep on coming back because they are convinced that we can get it done. They are not lacking.

“In the position like we are in we have got a good team, everything is good, we just need to get it together for one weekend, execute it well over the whole weekend and we will be fine.

“Just at the moment it feels like we always let it slip. Then you always feel like you are running out of time but then again it’s only race four. I’m not saying its fantastic, we should have done better.”