28/09/2017
NEWS STORY
Even though it is inevitable that at some stage over a Grand Prix weekend Romain Grosjean will complain about his brakes, usually using the odd profanity or two, the Frenchman recently claimed that this was a story built up by the media.
The fact is however, that for much of the season Grosjean has alternated between Brembo and Carbone Industrie brakes as he tries to find a solution that suits him.
While he is said to be more in favour of Carbone Industrie's brakes, a number of issues, not least a shortage of discs, has often led to the Frenchman having to revert to Brembo.
Speaking in Malaysia, the Frenchman revealed that this weekend the team will be trying new Carbone Industrie brake discs which the team could continue with for the remainder of the season.
"We have new discs with more cooling, which should help us," he told reporters.
"We're hoping to be able to do so," he replied, when asked about seeing out the season with the same brakes, "from this weekend onwards, if there aren't any more delays.
"We have designed different brakes," he added. "The whole team has been working well and doing good progress."
Both drivers will run the new discs on Friday, though Antonio Giovinazzi is scheduled to drive the opening session. Following the Friday sessions a decision will be taken on whether to continue with the Carbone Industrie discs or revert to Brembo.
"I had a better feeling even though I was saying Brembo has made really good progress recently," said Grosjean. "If we had to switch back to Brembo, I'm not too worried. It's going to be OK. I have a little preference for the CI, but again, everyone has been working well together and the team is pushing as hard as we can and it's nice to get everyone onboard and involved.
"Between Brembo and CI, they are two very good companies, so I'm pretty sure we are going to get to the end of that soon."
"This is a development, this is not something we know," added team boss Guenther Steiner. "This is something that's a step forward. We still need to test it obviously but it is a step forward, we've got the new material to test and see where we go."