Grosjean explains crash which caused FP2 miss

Romain Grosjean says chassis damage suffered in his FP1 off forced him to miss the afternoon practice session at Silverstone after a DRS issue triggered his early crash.

The Haas driver saw his Friday practice prematurely cut short by a crash midway through the opening practice session when he spun off at the first turn and hit the outside barriers. Extensive damage to his chassis and survival cell forced a change which meant he missed the entire afternoon session.

The French driver is confident the off won’t hampered his momentum following his fourth-place finish at the Austrian Grand Prix last weekend and says the crash was caused by his DRS flap being open which unsettled his Haas car.

A third DRS zone has been created for this weekend which begins at the start of the pit straight and includes Turns 1 and 2.

“The car was fast this morning and I closed the DRS a bit too late on that lap,” Grosjean said. “The aero flow didn’t recover and I lost the rear end.

“It’s a shame, obviously we wanted to run FP2 but I have been watching Kevin quite a lot and seeing what he’s doing. Track conditions, hot temperatures are quite interesting for everyone to understand.

“It wasn’t a big impact but I think the front wheel came back and removed some part on the chassis that it was easier to change the chassis than trying to change the aero part and that’s why we decided to change it.”

Grosjean is eager to maximise his FP3 running on Saturday morning having missed the majority of practice at Silverstone but doesn’t fear it will have a knock-on impact on his race weekend.

“FP3’s going to be quite important for us and we’re going to put as much into there,” he said. “Then going to qualifying and discover the track when it’s very warm, but hopefully we’ve learned what we needed to learn with Kevin today and we can apply those delta to my car.”