FP1 pitlane crash "a bit embarrassing" - Grosjean

Haas Formula 1 driver Romain Grosjean says his pitlane crash during opening practice for the British Grand Prix was “a bit embarrassing”.

Grosjean spun while exiting the pitlane early on in FP1 and destroyed his front wing by hitting the barriers, before having to crawl back to the pits. The Frenchman suffered a separate spin later in the session at Turn 6.

Speaking about the incident, Grosjean said: “The start of the day was a bit embarrassing.

“I turned the pit-limiter button off, the tyres were a bit cold and grip was low, next thing I knew I was backwards. It didn’t feel so good.

“After that though we got back on track and ran our program. I had a bit of an issue with a hydraulic line in the afternoon, we missed around half an hour of the session, but we’re getting some good data.”

Grosjean reverted to a Melbourne-spec aerodynamic configuration on Friday as Haas attempted to get on top of its recent performance struggles.

“We are trying to evaluate everything and understand everything we’ve done during the season and the feeling on the car is good, back to the feeling at the start of the season, which I was happy with,” he explained.

“There are limitations that we knew we would have, particularly with the wind, so we are paying a little bit of a price in that aspect.

“The feeling is very good in the car, much better than it was recently which is great. But the performance is not there, which we could expect.

“The wind is a bit factor on our package. But we need to analyse whether we can translate that feeling into performance.”