Tag: austrian grand prix

2017 Austrian Grand Prix – Race Review

With a waft of summer edelweiss in the air, Romain Grosjean finished 6th place in the Austrian Grand Prix with his Haas F1 Team car. With the finish Grosjean claims 8 more points and stands with a total of 18 points for the year in the 2017 F1 Drivers championship. He’s tied with the Williams of Lance Stroll and the Renault of Nico Hulkenberg  who also have 18 points for positions 11 thru 13. The other Haas car of Kevin Magnussen sits in that 14th spot with 11 points.

The Haas F1 Team has solidified their hold on the 7th spot in the constructors championship. Renault entered this race with 18 points to the 21 of Haas. Those yellow Renault cars could not keep up and finished out of the top 10 and therefore score no points. The deficit of  by the French team will allow the Americans to make a leap in pursuit of the next constructor in the standings, Toro Rosso. With 33 points, the Toro Roso’s of Carlos Sainz and Daniil Kvyat are loosing ground to the Haas Team… the game is afoot.

As for the race… Romain Grosjean was fast all week. Both of the Haas Cars were in the top 10 for all three practice sessions leading up to qualifying. Grosjean Qualified 7th, and started 6th, when Lewis Hamilton was bumped back 5 grid spots for a transmission swap penalty. Kevin Magnussen experienced a rear suspension failure during the first session of qualifying.  Despite not completing the the first qualifying session he still completed a lap fast enough to place him 15th on the grid…

In the world of woulda, coulda, shoulda.  KMags shoulda  scored points. His pre-race bout with the gremlin stick continued into the race as smoke began to pour from the rear of the Dane’s Ferrari in the 29th lap.  With a race distance of 71 laps, Magnesium woulda had plenty of time to advance one more position into the top 10 and the points. With both Toro Rosso’s and Renault’s finishing way back, this mechanical failure can directly attribute to the loss of at least one point. Despite the lack of points, both the driver and car demonstrated that they have the pace to lead the mid pack.

Romain Grosjean gets the Mailman award… he carried the mail and delivered 8 points for Gene Haas. Grosjean maintained his relative position the entire race.  He nor the team made any mistakes and the car was fast. The Ferrari powered Haas VF-17 is proving to be a fast car. And did anyone notice… no mention of brakes from Grosjean. Has Haas worked out the brake problems on the number 08 car? We shall see.

The next stop for the F1 circus is Silverstone and the British Grand Prix. Let’s see if the the Haas F1 Team can maintain the pace of fast, mistake free racing and race craft and conquer that 6th position ion the constructors championship from Toro Rosso…

Until then……. tally ho!

2016 Austrian Grand Prix – Race Final

Esteban Gutiérrez recently outperformed his teammate Romain Grosjean at the Spanish, Monaco and Canadian Grand Prix’s. Both in Spain and Monaco Esteban finished 11th, nearly capturing his first points for the Haas F1 Team. Though he did fall behind his team mate at the European Grand Prix, we’ve been seeing a surge in Esteban’s performance. And that dominance continued through qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix. Esteban Gutiérrez started 11th while Romain Grosjean started 13th.

At the end of the day Gutiérrez finished where he started, 11th. But Romain Grosjean again brought the Ferrari powered Haas car back into points by finishing 7th.  The Haas F1 team is firmly planted in the 8th constructors championship standing with 28 points and only 4 points behind Mclaren. And Jenson Button surely gave his Mclaren team a lift with his 6th place finish. The silver lining for the Haas Team is that both of their cars finished today. Fernando Alonso alone has as many DNF’s as the entire Haas team with 3 total. Button had two DNF’s himself. As the Haas Team pushes their cars harder towards the front there will be an impact on reliability. But this is the payoff we are looking to capitalize on, and reliability can be what turns those three Gutiérrez P11 finishes into points.

But for our man Romain Grosjean, what can we say… he just delivers. He spent half of the Austrian Grand Prix fighting off the Force India of Carlos Sainz and the Williams of Valtteri Bottas. The Haas car was giving Romain the horses he needed to fight the two Mercedes powered cars. Grosjean never gave his opponents a clean opportunity to pass and was at times threatening the Mclaren of Button in front of him. And because he was consistently less than one second behind Button, Grosjean never lost a DRS zone advantage. So he stayed pace with the competitors behind him .

So the Austrian Grand Prix is a good start to what promises to be a very busy July. From Austria the teams travel to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix on July 10th. Two weeks later on July 24th the teams meet at the Hungaroring for the Hungarian Grand Prix. A week later on July 31st is the German Grand Prix. With the Austrian race being the first of four races this month, the teams will be looking forward to their summer break in August.

So onto Silverstone for the Haas F1 Team and their fans. Our goal is to outperform McClaren on their home turf and close the four point gap with them. From there we set our sights on the Toro Rosso team, currently only leading the Haas team by only 8 points…

There are three more races until the summer break. A constructors championship goal of 7th before the break is not unreasonable. Their 8th place position in the constructors championship is safe with Renault lagging behind by 22 points in 9th place. So not only has the team already over performed beyond expectations, they’ve do so with little threat of losing their 8th place standing. With three races remaining before the half way point, the team is in a position to make a 4 point gain on McClaren and go into the break in 7th place! That may be a shade optimistic, but the luck factor does seem to play huge in F1. And considering how experienced Gene Haas is at running a race team, the luck might just continue.

But for today… Well done Haas F1 Team!!! Way to Represent!!!