06/10/2016
NEWS STORY
Romain Grosjean admits to trying to tone down public criticism of his team as it puts him in a bad light.
While one might have been left confused as to who exactly Lewis Hamilton was pointing the finger at in the wake of his Sepang retirement, one is left in absolutely no doubt as to how Romain Grosjean feels about his car.
You can guarantee that every session, every qualifying period and every race will feature at least one outburst from the Frenchman, keen to remind all and sundry that; "this is the worst car I have driven in a very, very long time".
Talking to reporters in Suzuka, Grosjean admitted that he does tend to get over excited but this is because he is passionate about his job and his team.
"I'm passionate, I'm not a Finn and very calm, I'm more a Latin guy," he told reporters. "It sounds like I'm an arsehole in the car. But I'm a nice guy and everyone knows it, and if I'm pushing it's because I'm pushing myself and I want to push everyone in the same way.
"I've tried to back off," he admitted, "because it was playing on TV and people who don't know me think it's wrong.
"But is there a microphone in the middle of a football game? A tennis court? We are a sport where there is a microphone," he added. "In every sport where you are maxxed out, where adrenaline is at its max, you are focused and you are into it.
"During a judo game, if you read the lips of the guy, they're not saying, 'well done, I'm going to get you in the next one'. They respect their competitor, but they are like, 'I'm going to kill you'.
"I've got the tendency to be too pushy and to be too passionate because I want to develop," he admitted. "But that's what the guys love. There's nothing personal when I say the car is bad or so on, it's just to put words on the feeling, which is not so easy to do.
"It's like when you try something and it's disgusting and you say, 'I hate it'. It's bad, but it's not against the thing or the cook, it's just not your taste. But you need to put a word on the feeling."
The Frenchman also admitted that part of his frustration is the new team's failure to react to live data quickly enough.
"Like Monza, we were over-stressing the front tyres in the first stint a lot, so after the race we found 'that's what we should have done'. It's too late, but you know it for the next time.
"It's very hard to get a read on the data straight away and come back to the drivers," he continued. "Most of the time we need to reprocess the data after the session, so it can take up to two hours to find out the balance. By putting some more processes in place, we could be much more accurate and much faster in the near future."
Check out our Thursday gallery from Suzuka, here.