Romain Grosjean was surprised by the pace of his Haas in second practice for the Italian Grand Prix, after rain limited running in the morning session.

With the first practice session disrupted by rain, the majority of teams were unable to get much running in and only gained limited information, and Grosjean accepted that his car was not in the right set up to be competitive, ending up 16th in the classification.

“In the morning, we just tried a little bit on the intermediates – I don’t think we were very competitive, the settings were not fully adjusted for the wet conditions.” commented Grosjean.

Once the track dried out in second practice later in the day, the Haas driver felt much more comfortable and was surprised by how much pace he was able to extract from the car.

“The afternoon was a surprise to be fair, I wasn’t expecting to be that comfortable in the car.

“The pace of the car was good, the feeling in the car was good, it was enjoyable.”

Grosjean’s best time of 1m22.153 was good enough for the eighth fastest time in the session, while his teammate Kevin Magnussen was 12th, with a fastest time of 1m22.511.

Magnussen was also happy with the pace of his car on long runs in second practice, but conceded that both sessions were quite messy and that it was hard to read too much into the timesheet.

“It was good today, we got to try both wet and dry conditions [and] it seemed okay in both.” added Magnussen.

“It was a little bit messy with times, so I’m not putting too much into the classifications.

“The feeling was good on the long run, it went well. The car actually felt good and had some grip.”