Haas, Grosjean: “I fought all weekend”

Smiles at home Haas for the excellent placement in the qualifying Malaysian GP. Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez had the opportunity to fight almost to the maximum of their possibilities, with an access to Q2 which brought them to the end, one step away from Q3. In the end, a 12th and 13th place arrived with good prospects for Sunday's race.

Great satisfaction for Grosjean, who worked hard with the team to get the car set up right.

“I fought all weekend to get the balance we wanted and in the end we found a good balance of the car. We had to change a lot, and it was strange, so we need to analyze more deeply what happened. In the end I was still quite happy. We had a problem at the end of Q1; we left the pits until the last minute with the team asking me to push hard on the lap, which is never ideal for the tyres, but we did it and everyone was satisfied. In Q2 we tried something a little different but it didn't work quite as expected. Tomorrow is a long race and we'll see what happens."

Happy too Gutierrez, despite a small mistake that didn't allow him to reach even more noble positions on the grid.

“Qualifying was very competitive. We worked hard throughout FP3 trying to optimize the car's set-up and we were ready. I saved all my energy for the last lap in Q2, where I was about to make the difference. I had a perfect lap, but I'm a bit disappointed because I took a lot of risks and tried to push as much as possible. I went a little wide at turn 14. I'm sorry for the guys for how they worked during the weekend, but we will focus and push all the way in the race."

Manuel Lai