It seemed like a strange decision at first. A French driver joining an all-new, all-American team just as Renault, one of the world's biggest French car manufacturers, was plotting its return to F1. But Romain Grosjean's career has always been about defying convention, taking risks and coming back from the brink. In that context, his decision to join Haas and leave Renault for the start of the 2016 season starts to make sense, but it was nearly very different.

"Last year in Monaco the room was booked and everything was ready for the announcement [of Renault's return]," Grosjean told ESPN. "It didn't happen then, so then it was supposed to be the end of June and then it was supposed to be Hungary. It was definitely going to be the Tuesday before Hungary and then it was after Hungary because it was the start of the summer break and then it was going to be at the end of the summer break. Then it was the Friday of the Italian Grand Prix and then on and on.

"If it had been done in May I would have stayed because I hadn't had any conversations with Haas, but then I discovered the project and the whole idea and thought this is a once in a lifetime chance. I can be in a brand new team, an American team, with what I believed would be a strong package -- at least in terms of suspension, engine, gearbox and support from Ferrari.

"The people have been working nicely on the car, they didn't rush in on a pay driver and they don't need sponsors because Gene wants to get the car on track first and see what we are capable of. We have got the funding to be here and here we are! Every time I get on the track I feel good and I feel happy. It's a nice experience."

But to understand Grosjean's decision, it helps to understand the context of his F1 career to date. He made his debut back in 2009 after being thrust into the spotlight with an opportunity to drive for the last incarnation of the Renault works team under Flavio Briatore. Grosjean took over from Nelson Piquet Jnr, who exited the team midseason following a messy break down in relations with Briatore just as the Crashgate scandal started to bubble to the surface. Naïve to the politics at play, Grosjean jumped at the opportunity to race in F1 but found himself plunging into the deep end unprepared.

"There is no way you can say no to a Formula One opportunity. The deal was seven grands prix to learn and then a full season with Renault in 2010, but I was managed by Flavio Briatore and when everything started to go away I was part of the furniture you remove to buy a new house! That was a bit of a tough one."

By the end of the year Renault was scaling back its involvement in Formula One, and Grosjean, who had been outshone by two-time champion Fernando Alonso, was not part of the team's plans under new ownership.

"My results were not good but the car was not good as well. In terms of pace I was 0.2s away from Alonso in qualifying with no testing and in my first year, I thought that was pretty good. I was happy with myself in terms of driving but maybe I didn't react to Formula One as I should.

"Nobody told me you should behave differently and I was shy, so everybody thought I was arrogant. I was shy as you can be and nobody came to see me to tell me to open up my eyes. Formula One is not only putting your helmet on, driving the car, getting out of the car and going home. It is much more than that.

"At the end it was a tough lesson but it helped me with a lot of things in life. The fact is that when Formula One stops you are still alive, you are still a person. Most of the time if a young driver doesn't get their dream they are destroyed. I woke up one morning knowing I wasn't going to be an F1 driver, but I was still there! I still had a few friends -- much less than before! -- but they were still there. It was a good life lesson."

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Less than six months earlier Grosjean had been the next big thing in F1's feeder series GP2, but by the end of 2009 his career in motorsport was on the ropes. A best finish of 13th at the Brazilian Grand Prix held little currency in the driver market and by the start of the next year he was informed by Renault's new team boss, Eric Boullier, that his F1 dream was over.

"On January 31 2010 I got a call from Eric saying they had signed Vitaly Petrov, so that was it. I took my backpack from Geneva and got on the train to Paris to see my future wife, who was living there. Then I thought, what do I do?

"To start with I did some lessons in a cooking school and I wanted to subscribe there and enrol, but then I got a phone call from a GT1 team called Matech, a Swiss team, to drive. I thought let's go back to racing, I miss racing. GT racing is not that bad and there will be a few opportunities."

Without that phone call from Matech, Grosjean might have ended up working as a chef in a Paris restaurant, but instead it put him back on the road to F1. A brief but very successful spell in the Auto GP championship with French team DAMS led to a championship-winning year in GP2 with the same outfit in 2011. Grosjean had thrust himself back on to the F1 radar and just two years after breaking the bad news in 2010, Boullier offered him a drive at the now-renamed Lotus Renault GP team in F1.

"In May 2010 I would have said this is it, I will never go back to Formula One. It was nice to do seven grands prix but that's it. When I got the chance to do GP2 again, I started to think about it again. They told me clearly that if you win the title, make DAMS a good team, show you are a team leader, then maybe you get a chance."

He was better prepared for F1 this time, but a series of first-lap accidents, the worst of which resulted in a one-race ban, meant his good results were in danger of being overlooked.

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"Of course you learn from the tough times and I remember the crashes, but I scored three podiums in 2012 and I was very close to winning more than once. Canada was close, Hungary was close and Valencia I should have won 22 times!

"I remember things almost went too quick for me. At the third or fourth race I was on the podium, at the next race I was P4 and then there were a few bad luck incidents and a few that were completely my mistake. People remember the crashes, but behind that it was still a good season."

The lowest point came at the Japanese Grand Prix when Grosjean collided with Red Bull driver Mark Webber and was branded a "first-lap nutcase" by the outspoken Australian. But for Grosjean it was also a turning point.

"Japan was the worst. I think at the end of 2012 it was difficult. The mental energy was down at the bottom, all my energy was down. Japan was the worst because I really couldn't understand what was going wrong.

"I started to work with some psychologists and the first thing was to put a plaster on the problem and calm me down for the rest of the year. Then through the winter I had to work harder. It's not like I changed completely - I'm still the same guy with blue eyes, blond-ish hair and a beard - but it was just small decisions at a hundredth of a second that meant it either went well or didn't go well. It was just understanding what was going wrong.

"My objective [in races] was the wrong one because I wanted to win and that was all that mattered, but Formula One is a bit more complicated than that. You need to realise that it is not GP2, not everybody has the same car, there are strengths and weaknesses and you need to work around. I picked myself together, took the hits and the punches and moved forward."

After a nerve-wracking winter in which Grosjean admits he had further doubts about his F1 future, he signed for another season in 2013 and started to put in some career-defining performances that cemented his place in F1. But just as he looked capable of challenging the very best drivers in the sport for victory, everything changed with the introduction of new V6 turbo engines. Lotus struggled with an underperforming and unreliable Renault engine before switching to Mercedes power in 2015, but by then the team was struggling for finances and development was extremely limited throughout the 2015 season. Grosjean managed to score a podium against the odds at the Belgian Grand Prix, but as Renault continued to deliberate over the whether to buy the team Grosjean made up his mind about his future.

"I got a call the week before the Italian Grand Prix from Guenther [Steiner, Haas team principal] that lasted 30-35 minutes and agreed to meet him on Friday night at Monza, and then on Saturday with Gene and we shook hands. The next Wednesday I took my decision in the morning and said 'This is where I am going'.

"It was a trade-off between staying at Renault and coming to a new team, and what would have been possible to do at either one. I think my best chance to be world champion was to come here and to have a new experience, be a better driver and see something new and something I didn't know. I wanted to fly with my own wings after being ten years at Enstone."

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Despite coming close on a number of occasions in 2012 and 2013, Grosjean is still chasing his first victory in F1. As a new team, Haas is not expected to challenge for wins this season but Grosjean is not ruling anything out.

"Never say never, because I said I would never be on the podium last year! We may win a race, but it's true that it's very unlikely on paper. But Gene has been successful with Haas Automation, he's been successful in NASCAR with the partnership with Stewart, so he's created the same idea in NASCAR by creating a partnership like he has in F1 with Ferrari. Who knows, he might be successful and I may be the one being a champion with an American team. Or maybe in a few years' time I will get another opportunity and that's the winning car.

"I think I'm there and I've got 10 podiums and shown I can be consistently at the front and when the car is not there I can do a miracle and bring it up the grid. I think I've shown my value, I want always to be the best and I want to improve myself and make things better. Last year the best opportunity I had for my career was to come to Haas."

Looking back at Grosjean's career there are a number of events that would have seen lesser drivers exit the sport permanently, but he has continued to fight for his place on the grid. His results up to now lack the glittering achievements of some of his contemporaries, but throughout his career Grosjean has got stronger and stronger. He is now considered by many to be among the top drivers in the sport, but the question remains whether he get a chance to prove it in a front-running car.