Romain Grosjean has branded the opening day of practice for the Singapore Grand Prix "the worst Friday you could imagine" after he completed just 14 laps in total across the three hours, having spent the majority of the time in his garage.
The Haas driver suffered an issue with his air intake during FP1, which allowed him to complete just two installation laps. Then during the second session he span and damaged his car heavily, resulting in lengthy repairs which saw his session end early.
"It was the worst Friday you could imagine for us," said Grosjean. "I didn’t get a lap in this morning, and then we had some issues this afternoon that we need to solve.
"There was just no performance. It’s a very bad way to start one of the most difficult grand prix of the year."
Team principal Guenther Steiner had hoped to complete as much running as possible as the team looked to collect data on its latest upgrades, but will have to rely on Esteban Gutierrez's data to get a direction for Saturday.
"Two quite difficult sessions for us. Esteban had to do all the work because Romain had a problem with the air intake system in FP1. We lost all his session with that. Then in the afternoon, Romain only did 12 laps, but had a spin and went backward into the wall.
"He damaged his rear wing, his floor and the rear suspension. We had to stop the car to change the rear suspension because it was too dangerous to go out again.
"When you have new parts on the car, you normally want to do as much running as possible to learn and to find the balance. We’re a little behind in our program today, but hopefully we can make up for it tomorrow in FP3."
