F1’s ways can be peculiar, to the point that if their equivalent were applied in any other walk of life we’d consider them illogical. Perhaps even deranged. We know that in this game the car is very important, and that a bad car cannot be overcome to a great extent no matter the driver’s skills. But even so if a good driver finds their way into a poor car rather than offer sympathy F1’s employers are guilty often of an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude. Perhaps even after a while the said driver finds their reputation actually suffer.
So it seems to be with Romain Grosjean. Just eighteen months ago at the conclusion of the 2013 campaign his was one of the most welcome stories around. Rising incredibly, a few spoke of him as the next to join the sport’s elite band of finest drivers. Quick and racy as he’d always been, but now absolutely assured. Yet since, with a season-and-a-half of being forced to drive a dog of a Lotus machine, much of that has been forgotten apparently.
Perhaps I myself was guilty of this too given a couple of weeks ago I left Grosjean out of my top 10 drivers’ mid-season ranking altogether. In mitigation it was a highly competitive rating – Daniil Kvyat and Max Verstappen were left out with regret also – but also I thought Grosjean’s first half of the year was sometimes on the scrappy side, as indeed was his second part of 2014. But then again we can forgive him if he was feeling frustration.
In Spa however he showed up me and plenty of others up with a stunning performance. In a car that had looked positively evil in Friday running he qualified fourth and then, having overcome a gearbox penalty, fought through with a magnificent race drive to finish in third place, probably the most unanticipated F1 podium visit of 2015 so far. OK you can talk about Sebastian Vettel’s exploding Pirelli, but Grosjean’s result didn’t owe much to luck either.
But for the reasons given Grosjean’s personal contribution shouldn’t have been a surprise. And even in that intervening season-and-a-half in a poor Lotus there still were clues of his ability if you knew where to look. Just as in Spa on the rare occasion in 2014 that the Lotus allowed him to do himself justice Grosjean took full advantage. In Spain – in a fashion that baffled the team – the E22 was reasonably on the pace for one weekend only and Grosjean qualified fifth and indeed ran ahead of the Ferraris in the race before his engine played up. While of course however bad the car there always is the yardstick of your team mate, and in this time Grosjean’s outqualified Pastor Maldonado by 25 times to five. Whatever you think of Pastor – and I know that for a few of you it’s not a lot – if he’s anything he’s quick.
And if you think this all sounds like hyperbole then consider the view of this senior Pirelli man quoted by Mark Hughes – himself a great enthusiast of Grosjean: “Some of the things we saw from him [Grosjean] in testing were just amazing,” said the Pirelli man. “In the entry speeds and momentum through fast corners in particular, the loads he could generate and maintain, the level of instability he could live with to keep the momentum up beyond the level that looked feasible for the car, the inputs he’d make that kept the car on that edge, I’d say he’s the fastest guy out there. We’d see this consistently from him.”
Romain Grosjean and Nico Hulkenberg (© Octane Photographic)
Yet now Grosjean appears in some danger of becoming the next Nico Hulkenberg; a fine talent somehow never quite in the right place to get a big break or otherwise unfathomably shunned. Was that Grosjean was reportedly not considered at all by Ferrari for its 2016 seat alongside Vettel, not even as a fall-back option, a case in point? Even though unlike at least two of the alternatives in Valtteri Bottas and Daniel Ricciardo it would not have required big wedge to shift him? Even allowing for that the Scuderia is likely to be looking ahead to 2017 when more options open up, in F1 as in anything there is always a here and a now.
But it was again with tragi-comic timing that it was just after when this seat was taped up by the incumbent Kimi Raikkonen that Grosjean provided the very public reminder of his skills in Belgium.
And even with the disappointments the man himself knows his ability: “I know what I can do with the car, I know when everything is under control I’m really quick” he said after his Spa drive.
The sanguine Frenchman also knows what he’s up against: “It’s true [the driver market] has been quite conservative for a few years” he noted after the Ferrari drive had closed off.
“You need to wait for your time, that’s part of the game. Patience.”
He added after his Spa result: “Sometimes there’s been times in the past year where you score one point or two points and it has been an incredible performance, probably you can’t see it on TV because it’s hidden by the fact that the car is not as good – but every time I’m in the car it’s to give my best.”
I’ve always been glad of Romain Grosjean’s continued presence in F1. Not only for his considerable talent, not only either for his perma-smiling demeanour and open, engaging personality. Also that he embodies something; something that seems logical to most of the rest of us but the warped perceptions within F1 usually miss and should be reminded of.
Among the sport’s decision-makers minds can and mostly do snap shut like trapdoors in next to no time, never to be prised open again. Trying to cite cases in the last decade or two of F1 drivers who’ve got their chance, not taken it, but then perhaps after a spell away got another, is an unrewarding task largely. But Grosjean is a salutary reminder that we should never write people off; that second chances should always be considered as not doing so could result in massive wastes of talent. And in the Frenchman’s case he has not just one but two scarcely credible comebacks on his trajectory.
His first F1 go was stepping in for the punted Nelson Piquet Jr. in the final few rounds of 2009. And his drives, given the circumstances, perhaps weren’t deserving of the disaster category that many have filed them under. Being team mate to Fernando Alonso is one of the modern sport’s great graveyard shifts, the Renault R29 was a difficult and uncompetitive machine, Grosjean stepped in with no testing (it didn’t help that at this stage, the first year of the in-season testing ban, many hadn’t really twigged just what an impediment this was to new drivers) and the team was in turmoil off the track. With all this the average gap between Grosjean and Alonso in qualifying was under sixth tenths of a second. Given everything, hardly a bad effort. But he was dropped at the year’s end, F1 concluding apparently that he was a ‘have not’.
This crash cost Grosjean a one-race ban in 2012.
But Grosjean rather than accept his fate had a long look at himself and came back even stronger. He proceeded via the perhaps unusual route of Auto GP and then GP2 Asia before cantering to the GP2 title proper in 2011. Then he took a big stride to sealing a Lotus drive for 2012 by outpacing his race driver team mate in both Friday practice sessions he ran in during the final two rounds of 2011.
For those who encountered him ‘before and after’ as it were the Grosjean that returned to the sport’s top echelon in 2012 was different person to the one that had quietly slinked away two-and-a-bit years earlier. The awkward and uncertain figure was gone.
Things however got tough again that season. Some counted as many as nine early-race contacts involving Grosjean from (in his case) 19 races, and while analysis demonstrated that they were by no means all his fault it also was clear that spatial awareness and an ability to smell danger and avoid distraction in the opening corners were gaps in his repertoire. And yet so long as he survived the race’s opening Grosjean tended to put in very good performances on Sundays that year, particularly early in the campaign. He might even have won in Canada and in Valencia had one or two cards fallen the other way.
But of course one of those early-race contacts was in Spa, where an unfathomable veer from him across a crowded track set off a multi-car pile-up and earned Grosjean F1’s first – and only – race ban since 1994. It then got worse at Suzuka when apparently not paying much attention he took out Mark Webber at turn one, and the open season that followed – led by the Australian who memorably called him a “first lap nutcase” – seemed to destroy whatever fragile confidence of Grosjean’s remained. Many sniggered behind palms when he was retained by Lotus for 2013 especially as in the early part of that year little changed. Come Monaco, when he squeezed two prangs practice then driving into Ricciardo in the race, it looked like he’d used up all of the available patience. That he’d never learn. Many were speculating as to his replacement that plenty thought would arrive within the next race or so.
But there was a reason Lotus was keeping the faith, and even within his Monaco long dark night of the soul there was evidence of it. Between his scrapes in the Principality he was seriously fast and his flair was shown quintessentially when getting out on track with minutes to spare in Q1 (a result of his FP3 smash) he immediately banged in a great lap time to make it into the next session, in the most challenging of circumstances of a drying track in Monaco.
And like someone flicked a switch after Monaco all of sudden Lotus got payback. Grosjean’s performances picked up and in Germany he was looking the favourite to win indeed – based on getting incredible longevity on the soft tyre in his opening stint – only to be scuppered by a mid-race safety car. In Hungary too he pulled off a stunning pass on Felipe Massa that was shamefully penalised.
Then from Singapore onwards that year Grosjean’s star really rose, not only leaving team mate Raikkonen a way behind persistently in qualifying and races but being almost as persistently by far the haughty Red Bull team’s closest, often only, outside challenger. All the while he showed that he had sorted his old weaknesses by being assured and robust with other cars around and flawless when under pressure. Four podiums in five late season races was his reward.
The main attendant risk of course in calming down a fast but wild driver is that in so doing you lose the outer edge of their pace and combativeness but amazingly that has never appeared the case with the new and improved Romain. And in that way that F1 loves a coincidence it was a year on at the same venue of the “first lap nutcase” that possibly was his finest drive, leading for much of the 2013 Japanese race and forcing the pit wall of the superior Red Bulls to employ a pincer movement strategy that strained further the already creaking Webber vs. the team trust levels. Even Webber though had to admit the Frenchman had mended his ways. I recall too being in Austin for his fine second place there, splitting the Red Bulls when he had no right to, and how the Americans watching on adored the story of the pariah made good. But little did anyone know that, due to the Lotus turning awful, this would be his final podium appearance before that latest one in Spa. That where we came in.
Back on form? Grosjean celebrates a podium in Belgium.
Lotus reckoned much of the improvement from Grosjean has been psychological, and Grosjean has been frank that a major part of this has been his seeing a psychologist. “I wanted to see my psychologist, I needed some help. I didn’t understand what was going on” he said in recent weeks.
“It has made me a better driver, a better dad, a better husband, hopefully, and just a better man in general.”
Again it’s something often met with an intake of breath in the strange, po-faced world of F1. But it’s worth reflecting that in most other professional sports use of psychologists is absolutely routine. And surely, bottom line, if it helps then why not? “It’s like having a tool box containing only a screwdriver and you add another tool” explained Grosjean to that end. This willingness to go against the grain, and not be ashamed to say so, is another reason why I’m glad Romain is around.
Of course there was another big reason why his fine Spa drive had a slightly poignant air, in that it came amid considerable and what for a few other teams perhaps would have been debilitating manifestations of financial woe for Lotus.
Financial woes for the squad are nothing new, they have been around since Renault let go of the team in 2009 indeed with the new owner Genii Capital wanting to fund things in part through sponsorship which didn’t arrive. Instead owner Gerard Lopez put in his own cash in the form of soft loans – a move that tends to store up trouble for later. But even though on-track success continued for a time starting with Raikkonen’s famous ructions over his wages not arriving in 2013 and building from there the thing got dragged down there too. The list of people owed money built at the same time, as did the number of key personnel leaving. Development of the car this year has been near-zero, with updates existing but there being no cash to turn them into reality. In Hungary the Pirelli tyres were late arriving due to tardy payment then of course in Spa last time out the team’s cars were impounded for a time due to a legal challenge from its former reserve driver Charles Pic who is arguing that he didn’t get as much time in the car as promised.
Little wonder that the team’s admirably-frank veteran Alan Permane said in Belgium that “this is the worst season we have had financially”. Indeed Permane admitted that a lot of the reason Grosjean got his gearbox penalty in Belgium is that the team simply can’t afford more than three gearboxes for the season, meaning every time one driver has to use a race gearbox in practice.
Somehow, in a way you suspect that only Team Enstone could, it was all shrugged off as the squad got on with it. But also it is little wonder there was hardly a dry eye in the house when the Spa podium finish was claimed, not least from driver and team. And once again for Grosjean another coincidence was served up – it coming three years on at the very scene of his greatest low as an F1 pilot.
Through its various ownership changes and changes in personnel Team Enstone has maintained the common thread of a hardy collective of happy go lucky racers, who whatever else is going on make the best of what they have. And we know from experience that in ideal circumstances that best gets towering results. In Romain therefore they have a lead driver that in many ways provides the perfect final link in the chain.
And things might just be coming up for Romain at last. Rumours have persisted of Renault once again purchasing the Enstone team, and although in the short term this has created more problems – as Grosjean noted in Hungary “when you are thinking of selling the team you won’t put any money in, because it’s all loss” – for the future it looks a lot like salvation. Autosport has just reported that a deal is set to be inked.
Grosjean too knows what’s likely to await in that scenario: “I won’t hide that if Renault buys the team it will be really good to be a French driver in a French team” he said.
“The team still knows how to produce a good car. If the cashflow is better we can get back to a more conventional development plan.”
Therefore we can all be hopeful of a Renault resurgence. And in Romain too it has a pilot who knows all about resurgences himself.
