Haas F1’s Australia pitstop was a “bad curse” for rest of the season

Romain Grosjean has called the pitstop issue that led to retirement at the Australian Grand Prix at the beginning of the year a “bad curse” for himself and Haas for the rest of the season after struggling with performance.

2019 opening race in Australia was almost identical for Grosjean to the year before, that saw both cars retire, as a botched pitstop caused the Frenchman to retire due to a left wheel nut problem.
 
Since then performances have been poor, including six more retirements and a ninth position in the team standings, quite different to their finish of fifth in the constructor’s championship in 2018.
 
“It has been a rough season. We had a very promising winter testing. We got to Australia and things were looking good until the pitstop,” said Grosjean.
 
“That pitstop was kind of a bad curse for the whole season. We had good qualy pace and race pace was more difficult.
 
“We are doing the best we can, honestly, on track and off track the boys are working very very hard.
 
“There’s not a lot to say about what we could do better with what we’ve got. The car is just not good enough and everything we do is not reflected on track.”
 
Grosjean has gone eight races without finishing in the points since the chaotic German Grand Prix, with the team that have kept the 33-year old and Kevin Magnussen's focus very much on 2020
 
“Germany was good to be in the points, a bit of a crazy race and the idea was to finish the race and we did. That was positive,” he added.
 
“But more recently it has been more complicated to fight for the points. Again, not a fault of the team and the work that has been done has been good.
 
“But it is just the car we have is not good enough to fight for good points. I guess the focus was very early on into 2020 and make sure next year we get a better tool to work with.”