Grosjean future not in question, says Haas
Haas F1 boss Gunther Steiner says that Romain Grosjean's future at the team has not been threatened by incidents in the last two races.
Photo by: Joe Portlock / Motorsport Images
Grosjean crashed behind the safety car when well placed in Azerbaijan, and then triggered a collision with Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly when he spun in front of the pack in Spain.
That earned him an expensive three-place grid penalty for Monaco.
Steiner, however, insists that there has been no internal debate about Grosjean's future.
"We didn't even speak about it," said Steiner. "When somebody has two bad races there's no point to start rumours, or to start to do things about it.
"The only thing that we need to do is to get Romain back to where he is capable of competing, which we all know is a very capable guy.
"I'm not a person when if someone's on his knees I try to kick him, that's unfair.
"For sure he knows better than all of us what not to do, not to do another Baku and Barcelona. But can it happen again? Yes, it could. It's Monte Carlo.
"But just to stop the rumours, there was never a talk about that one."
Steiner says he has tried to encourage Grosjean to look for positives.
"During the race I came off [the pit wall] and went to speak to him, because I know how you feel when something like this happens, we've all had bad moments in our life, and how you feel.
"I said to him, just get over it, there's no point to dwell on it, you know what you can do, get over it, focus, the next race is coming, and be positive."
Steiner conceded that a penalty was inevitable after the Barcelona incident, but stressed that he wants the FIA to be consistent.
"In the emotion I would say it's harsh, looking back now you cannot not do anything about anything, because then where do we end up? It's difficult to say. He didn't do anything intentionally, or he didn't do run into anybody.
"For me it's more consistency, what we need to achieve in these penalties, so the next time somebody else does something similar, I hope he gets the same penalty. Kevin [Magnussen] was taken out in Baku, we lost half of the car, in the starting incident, and it was a 10-second one.
"Ten seconds in Baku when you're last already by the way is a lot less than a three-place grid penalty going into the next race.
"They need to do something, because we cannot just not do anything if you make mistakes, even genuine mistakes."
Regarding the grid penalty, he added: "It doesn't help, but we have got it, what can we do about it? We know going in every position you qualify better than you should it's one less you go back, in theory. So it counts.
"You start already with a penalty, and for sure here it doesn't help, it's the most crucial part of it. You also need to get again going even with a three-place penalty and start hopefully a trend that we go uphill with him."
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