A problem with Romain Grosjean’s rear wing cost him half a second on the straight at the Circuit of the Americas, says the Haas driver.

Grosjean qualified 15th, three places and 0.179 seconds behind team mate Kevin Magnussen . He said he was disappointed with the result having been sixth in first practice before he suffered various setbacks.

“We have had a fair bit of issues during the weekend,” said Grosjean, whose problems began when he crashed during the second practice session.

“Yesterday afternoon we tried the updated package and it’s got big issue in the high-speed corners and basically, I lost the car for no reason. Just the rear downforce went. There’s nothing you can do.”

“The rear downforce decided to go,” Grosjean explained in response to a question from RaceFans after qualifying. “They can’t explain it. They say this package, we just don’t touch it any more.

“So obviously, [we] reverted back to FP1 and this morning we had a problem with the rear wing. I said the car doesn’t feel the same as it was in FP1. Then they could see on the data that we had a problem with the rear wing. So we had to change the rear wing, not take the risk.”

That further change compromised Grosjean in qualifying. “I had to run a very heavy rear wing in terms of drag,” he said. “It was about half a second on the straight compared to Kevin. Making up half a second in the corners is pretty tricky.”

Grosjean admitted he’d been hoping for better in the team’s home event. “All in all it’s a long season, it’s hard to keep your head up, and when [it’s] your home race and there’s nothing you can do, you’re bloody slow on the straight, it’s just painful.”

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2019 F1 season