21/05/2018
NEWS STORY
In the wake of successive nightmare races, Romain Grosjean will need to make amends this weekend in Monaco.
His early reputation as a reckless crasher - his antics at Spa in 2012 earning him a race ban - a distant memory, on his last two outings the Frenchman has made the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
A mistake behind the safety car in Baku saw him crash into the barriers, while another mistake on the opening lap in Barcelona saw him take out Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly.
The Haas driver heads to Monaco with a three-place grid penalty, aware that the media has him under close scrutiny, teammate Kevin Magnussen seeks to build on his tenth place in the standings while Grosjean is one of only two drivers yet to open his 2018 points account.
Team boss Guenther Steiner keeps the faith however, and insists that the Frenchman is merely going through a bad spell and will bounce back.
"It eats on you, but sometimes a little bit of success puts it the other way," said the Italian. "At the moment he is, for sure, on a down but I spoke to him and he seems to have reacted OK.
"It's not how you get down, it's how you get up," he added. "So if he has a Romain result, like he can have, everyone will have forgotten about the last nine races.
"It's just one of those things, you need to just keep on working hard at yourself and with what you are doing because then you will get back. If you have got the talent and you know that you can do it you just need to materialise on it."
During his previous 'bad spell' Grosjean sought the help of a sports psychologist, and it's fair to say the youngster was a changed man in the aftermath, even some of his harshest critics were won over. However, a string of poor performances have seen the nagging doubts return, prompting fears that this could further impact the driver.
"In sports, you need to be able to do this," says Steiner. "If something goes wrong, you come back stronger. That's the only thing you can do. We're not even a quarter of the way through the season, so we don't need to panic. With a car like this, he just needs to say, 'I will have a flawless weekend and I will be fine.' A professional can do that, and he's a professional."
Referring to the Barcelona crash, the Italian said: "I said to him 'I cannot blame you for this, you tried to get the best start you could and it didn't work out... move on'. It was as easy as this. Focus on Monte Carlo, we know he can be very strong at Monte Carlo.
"The only thing is to qualify as good as he can," he adds. "With a three-place grid penalty, I don't think you can scheme anything. The only thing you can come up with is to qualify as well as you can and then deal with the penalty."