Haas F1 Team driver Romain Grosjean returned to testing Wednesday at Circuit de Barcelona – Catalunya.
The 31-year-old Frenchman recorded 78 laps around the 4.655-kilometer (2.892-mile), 16-turn track, adding to the 55 laps he accumulated last Monday on the opening day of preseason testing.
Grosjean’s quickest time was a 1:20.237, earned on his 25th lap shod on a set of Pirelli P Zero Yellow soft tires. It placed him eighth among the 14 drivers who turned laps and it was Haas F1 Team’s fastest time thus far in testing.
The day started with an installation lap at 9 a.m. local time on White medium tires. Timed runs quickly followed for Grosjean with three stints on the Yellow soft tire, logging 30 laps before a switch to the supersoft compound for two additional runs totaling 20 laps.
For the second consecutive afternoon, time was surrendered in the garage as the team worked feverishly to fix an oil leak discovered after a 13-lap run by Grosjean on medium tires. The Haas VF-18 returned to the circuit with a scant 20 minutes left on the clock. Armed with a set of used supersofts, Grosjean maximized the remaining run time by adding 11 laps before switching to used softs for three, final grid formation laps.
Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo set the day’s quickest time (1:18.047) and ran the most laps (165).
“It’s good to be back in the car. I enjoyed the day. The team has been doing a good job since the last day I drove, which was the first day of testing. The car felt very nice. The positive feeling I had early on is still there, and I’m still enjoying driving it. We had a bit of an issue in the afternoon which cost us track time, unfortunately. But the time we’ve had on track has been quality time. The most important thing is that I have a good feeling in the car.”
“Another day of testing has gone by. We again had a little bit of down time and we didn’t do our whole program. It was good to have Romain in on a dry day due to the time he missed last week because of the weather and to get his impression of the car. It wasn’t ideal today, but we’re still positive about it. We have two more days to go and, hopefully, we can get more laps in.”
Teammate Kevin Magnussen returns to the Haas VF-18 on Thursday with Grosjean completing the second and final week of testing on Friday.
