The Frenchman has had a frustrating time in his Haas, suffering two separate crashes and confessing that he has no explanation for what is going wrong.

And after a spin in qualifying pitched him into the barriers in Q2, leaving him 15th on the grid, he will now drop to 20th after his team discovered the impact had damaged his gearbox.

When asked what had gone wrong, Grosjean said there was no explanation for the torrid time he has had out on track.

"I don't know," he said. "Since we started running here the car feels weird. I have been trying a lot of different set-ups. We lost FP1 but that is something else, and then I don't know. It is very weird.

"It is not normal to put it twice in the wall in two days – not understanding what is going on. Something is not going quite right."

Grosjean said that the behaviour of his car was totally unpredictable, and had left him unable to have faith out on track.

"Confidence is shit. Close to zero," he said. "When you spin once at high speed and the second time you spin under braking, it is hard to get any confidence.

"We are looking at the data to see what we could do. We are checking what the car is as well after the crash and what are the damages, and then in the race hopefully the first few laps are good and we can build from there. But clearly I am not going to attack much in the first few laps."

Although Haas has brought updates to the car, both driver and team believe that the changes do not offer an explanation.

Instead, team principal Gunther Steiner thinks that the answer comes from simply being behind on set-up after losing FP1 because of an engine problem.

Steiner said: "My analysis up to now, not having the complete data, is we started with the problem with the air intake system and we didn't do any running.

"In FP2 we went out there and maybe we tried to achieve too much in too short a time, and didn't get there. It is just one of these spiralling things in my opinion."

With Mercedes having shown last year that playing catch-up on set-up at Singapore can be tough to manage, Steiner added: "Absolutely. And if they get lost and cannot get it back, how should we?

"I think it is one of the tracks because it is so special. It also in the head, frustration after frustration and all of a sudden you don't think clear any more. But he will come back."