The Chinese Grand Prix for the Haas boys, Grosjean and Gutierrez, was basically uneventful. Which means it was a 100% success!
14th and 19th final positions are nothing to write home about, or even consider good. But it’s OK. The primary goal was to finish the race, that box gets a big check mark. The second, at least my second, tick mark was for Grosjean to be in points. He was not, in fact he finished in that 19th position. But it’s OK!
Gutierrez needed a successful race and he got it. He also had the experience of beating his teammate, without it hurting Grosjean’s ego. Romain can write off his drive to development.
Grosjean’s slow pace was attributed to the new nose. He got caught up in the turn 1 race start tango, his front nose got damaged and he had to run the newly designed nose.
Can a nose have that much of an effect on the overall lap time, causing such a performance hit? I mentioned in my pre-race entry that the long straight, .72 miles, will exaggerate any excessive downforce in time, disproportionately. And I believe that is what we’ve seen.
You learn as much about aerodynamics, perhaps even more, by what does not work sometimes. Since I was a kid I’ve designed, built and flown model planes. It was my failed wing designs which better helped demonstrated Bernoulli’s principal, not my successes. Note* Success in model aviation is a relative term. Any success in model aviation is eventually met by total devastation; pilot error is even more constant than the laws of physics 🙂 Anyhow…
In the grand scheme of The Haas F1 Team, we have every reason for optimism. So let me focus on the pessimism. I need a bounce back race. It does not have to be an 6th place finish, but an 8th place finish in Sochi would validate the performance of the first two races.
On the optimistic side… we know we have a good car. Romain Grosjean said it’s the best car he’s ever driven. We know we have a reliable car. Pit stops are in the 3-3.5 second range. That is a good thing.
I was really hoping to see if the Haas car could run with the Williams under high speeds. I’m not sure I would call Sochi a high speed track, but the turn 2-3-4 sequence is about as opposite from China’s Shanghai circuit as possible.
The long wrap around counter clockwise half oval provides opportunities for passing. But as we saw last year, bringing too much speed into turn 4 can effect the exit speed. The turns 5-6-7-8 sequence will be hard on hard off in sequence in the box like turning, and a poor exit from turn 4 can can push mistakes during that sequence… let’s see if Max Verstappen picks up a position or two in that turn 4-8 section.
The track seems to favor Haas. I’m assuming that they will have the front wing worked out. The car is already mid-pack fast. Grosjean again will shine, and Gutierrez will also impress.
I am late with my report, and I think everyone moved on from China real quick. I wrote most of this early in the week but got lazy. My apologies!!!
See ya’ll in Russia!