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Steiner unsure of reason behind Grosjean's midseason turn of form

Steiner unsure of reason behind Grosjean's midseason turn of form

01-11-2018 10:02

Gunther Steiner remains confused as to what caused Romain Grosjean's mid-season form turnaround. The Frenchman failed to score a single point in the opening eight races of the 2018 season. This sparked concerns about his future in F1, let alone at Haas.

But Grosjean turned it around. His fourth-place finish in Austria remains the teams best result since their F1 debut. Grosjean has lifted himself into 13th place in the drivers' standings, scoring 31 points.

But what sparked this mid-season turn around? His boss isn't sure what initiated it, but he points out an improvement in qualifying.

"I think we all saw it. If you think now, he got into Q3 11 times in a row - that's never happened to him before," Steiner told crash.

"That is quite an achievement for a team like ours, I was just told this last race. I did not know it as well because it just goes by you so quickly. So that is quite an achievement."

"Something changed for him, I still haven't worked out what. I just hope he understood what changed so he doesn't make a change back again."

Steiner denied he was looking elsewhere at the time. But now he's made a U-turn and admitted he was making plans to push out Grosjean. This was probably promoted by how Grosjean threw away early season points with some basic mistakes. This peaked at his crash into the barriers under safety car conditions in Baku.

"We looked around, but we never got into any [real] talks. I'm always serious if I talk with people, I never steal people's time, but we never got into any negotiations with anybody," Steiner added.

"I think he just came around at the right time. Again, our aim was to keep him because, for the obvious reason, stability is worth a lot in this sport."