Didn't see a thread on Grosjean in F1 where we can follow his progress (or lack of...) The Piquet/Grosjean thread was not really dedicated to this.

So how will he do? My impression of him is that he is a bit aggresive and makes overtaking moves when there are none possible... but I could be wrong...

Grosjean is a tricky one. He's never done anything that special throughout his career in my opinion. Could easily become a very solid driver like Glock but nothing more. Renault will be in trouble next year if Fernando leaves

Grosjean,wth...Rather slow for now.Guess I just expected him to get into the car and blow everybody off.

Good to see Alonso at least gave Piquet his due.

Damn,this is going to be entertaining as f. The guy has brought all the aggression of GP2 over,dicing with people in an FP session..

Been following him awhile. Blows rather hot and cold. Nothing in his junior career to suggest he'll be any quicker than Piquet was. Intermittently very fast, but not consistent and rather error-prone. This Renault drive will either be the making or the breaking of him.

I don't see anyone else is the junior formulae who looks obviously better though. Hulkenberg? Senna? Di Grassi? Maybe... But if it were up to me I'd put Liuzzi or Davidson in the car.

Except that his raw pace has looked pretty damn impressive quite often in GP2 and in F3 Euro. Besides, going by Piquet's junior record, I dont think many expected him to be as bad as he was.

Grosjean is somebody that has a ton of potential, he just needs to control his aggression a bit when it matters. Qualifying will be telling. It was never something that seemed his specialty in F3 Euro or GP2, but then again, Piquet looked really good in qualifying in GP2 and then looked bad in F1. I think its more team/setup related than anything. But I think Grosjean will give it his all for a good spot on the grid. I dont think he's gonna take it nearly as easy as Jaime did back in Hungary. And in the race, I'll be surprised if he finishes, but if he doesn't make any mistakes, I think he could impress on his debut, with maybe 10th-15th spot finish.

We'll see.

True, you never really know until a guy gets a chance in F1. I remember, way back in 1991, thinking that giving the Jordan seat at Spa to some sportscar driver called Schumacher was a terrible waste.... (he'd looked unexceptional in F3000)

And I was genuinely surprised by how bad Piquet seemed to be. In a way, he suffered from Hamilton's performance in his year alongside Alonso. Had Hamilton not matched Alonso from the off, I think the team might have looked at Piquet's performances and thought "about as good as a rookie in a difficult car alongside a double champion could be expected to do". Hamilton, and to a lesser extent, Kubica, have rewritten the rulebook as far as what's expected of new F1 drivers is concerned.

With the multitude of race series out there it is completely plausible to believe you can literally buy your way to the front. The way lower level racing works means many drivers can go unnoticed. It's a minefield for F1 teams and thats why you see guys who look average in x race series come alive in F1 because your are only racing your team mate. You can finish 10th in F1 and it's a good result, in other series your a failure. The reason is people don't actually know the full story in lower series in regard to the drivers. A driver who finishes 10th may have a crap team and lack of testing. for most guys 10th is bad, but those in the know will have a different story.

Too true. Though I reckon that to win in GP2 or WSR, you need at least to be reasonably competent. On that basis, I wonder if Andy Soucek might be worth a closer look. He's doing very well in F2, where all the cars are run centrally. On the other hand, it's not clear that there's much strength in depth in that series, so who knows...

Well I've not seen RG in other series, but he has ben pretty medicore when testing for RF1 in the past.

What testing, exactly?


Meanwhile, FP3 - 0.3s faster than Alonso. Not too shabby at all.

Testing he did throughout 08.

Piquet often finished ahead of Alonso in FP.

We will see in Qualifying where Romain really is at. So far to not have binned it he has been pretty good. Judging by his GP2 weekends I half expected him to be a wall/car magnet. Then again, the big one is this afternoon and tomorrow!

Agreed, seems alright so far.

2 tenths off in Q1, 3 tenths off in Q2. That was an above-average performance for Piquet, so for Romain to achieve this in his first weekend without much experience in the car, I'd say he's had a very good start.

Grosjean always looks fast, let's see if he can keep it together in the race. Great job, keep it up

Yup,good start indeed.Hope he keeps this up,but like I said,I think he's going to be much better in the races than in the Quali sessions.Watch out for some aggressive moves in the midfield.


If he continues to be as quick as he was in Q1,it could be a bit like 2006/07 all over again.I'll just sit back and enjoy the ride..

Grosjean is a french-swiss, so I expect him to have better treatment in the team. By that I mean things like access to Alonso's telemetry data, Alonso's setup........ just like Lewis boy had. That way is not hard for someone to start doing well very soon, you can see how the fastest driver in F1 goes in every corner so you can copy it, use a appropriate setup which a rookie wouldn't be able to make by himself. For these reasons, I expect Grosjean to do better than Piquet, but nothing much better than today, 2-3 tenths will be the difference between Renault drivers imo through out the rest of the season.

If Renault boycotted Alonso as Mclaren did, so that would be a chance for Grosjean to make things harder for the spaniards, but that. won't be the case

Agree. Can't ask for more than that

remarkable performance from Roman
First time in the car...and he is close to his teammate and looked really fast

So you know for sure that Piquet never got access to Alonso's data? You really think Renault would go out of their way to disadvantage a driver that can potentially earn them millions of dollars in points just because of his nationality?

Once again you seem to think you know things you dont.

Anyways, Grosjean did good today. For first time out, I think he did better than could have been expected. Tomorrow will be a different story, though. He likes to pass people, and passing in an F1 car is a bit more tricky than in GP2. Being in the middle of the back pack is pretty much the most difficult spot to be in to survive the first corner, so hopefully he can have a decent race if he can just get through that.

I'm impressed. Much faster than I was imagining. Shows that Ferrari very well could try Hülkenberg for Singapore and Suzuka, and that the standard in GP2 is really good.

Piquet said that.

Maybe Piquet don't say the truth all time?

I am yet to read that from Piquet's statements. Can you provide a link please?

He said that he was sabotaged cuz of his nationality?

Piquet didn't say that - as if you don't know! All teams share data between the drivers to help them go faster!

A brazilian guy wrote in another thread that Piquet said that in a local radio.


The brazilian guy didn't wrote anything about nationality(that's me supposing things), he just said Piquet told the reporters that he didn't have any sort of help from Alonso's part of the team, neither telemetry data nor setup help, although according to this guy, Piquet said Renault used him to test things for Alonso and rarely had opportunity to improve his qualifying pace.


At least this brazilian guy wrote it, if that is true, I obviously can't know. Theorethically you're right, but after Mclaren's season maybe Alonso doesn't agree with this procedure and Briatore does everything Alonso wants.

Grosjean is talented, more so than Piquet in my opinion.

He just looks faster, don't know if it's his hair or driving style.

Grosjean = faster then Piquet

Its a no brainer, good choice. end of subject.

Grosjean has impressed me this weekend.

Fast, no fuss, and qualified pretty well for a rookie.

Of course Grosjean did well, just look at Badoer to see that is not easy to adapt to these cars. In addition to a good performance he also benefited from Nakajima's problem and Ferrari not having a decent driver in Felipe's car.

For his debut it was very good but he must do a bit better in the last races of the season, look at Buemi, who was nothing more than average in GP2, and is doing very well in F1. Buemi's Q1 lap is faster than Grosjean's Q2 lap, strangly Buemi's Q2 lap was really slow, I suppose it was due to traffic. Piquet was really bad compared to this two.

Another nice thing to say is how skilled Grosjean is, he made some nice "saves" and drifts during FPs.

Yep, a quality top line driver. Euro series champion (in just one season!!!!????), top GP2 pilot... definately a proper choice for F1 promotion.

Certainly shows the teams can select drivers from outside F1, if they consider their pace properly.

A Kubica/Grosjean line-up for Renault would be apparently just as good as about any line-up on the grid (certainly likely to provide them with an edge over the likes of Williams and maybe Toyota), good choice for Renault

Grosjean did very well today and he was very close to Alonso in Q2.
In GP2 he was one of the best overtakes; he sure is a spectacular driver and let's not forget that he won the European F3 championship and the Asian GP2 championship.

Kobayashi has shown this year in GP2 proper that having won the Asian GP2 Championship doesn't mean shit. Grosjean has a ton of speed, but has been too erratic in GP2 to put in a solid title challenge. Winning all these junior championships is overrated anyway. It's enough that you're regularly the fastest guy on the track and Grosjean qualifies.

A very elegant spin by Grosjean...

F1 live report Alonso had brake problems in qualifying and they didnt discover it until after qualifying. The balance was wrong because of it and he kept locking the fronts.

Indeed Alonso had problems. But even so, Grosjean clearly was a very good and sensible option. Very good Flavio.

Alonso had a break problem which cost him 0.6 a lap according to Auto, Motor und Sport, so 0.9 difference between Grosjean and Alonso.
The accident at the start and the high speed off track incident of Grosjean, he is NOT F1 material, I do not understand why Piquet had to go,
in 4 of 9 races this year no same equipment as Alonso, yet Piquet faster then Alonso in Bahrain and Spain with a lesser car. Briatore ( pocket )
politics, nothing else.

why is this 0.6 seconds always coming up?

If it was 0.6 sec Alonso would win the race at Valencia?

It's joke from Flavio this story,i'm a fan of RF1 but sometimes the team says bullshit.

How do you compare Grosjean with Piquet?

Piquet had a tons of miles in F1 with RF1,BAR and Williams...

Piquet Jr is a farce , you have just what's happened in F3 Sud am in 2002:
http://www.ten-tenths.com/forum/attachment.php?postid=369864
http://www.ten-tenths.com/forum/attachment.php?postid=369718


He tried to brake the interdiction of Testing.

Rob Wickens on the Red Bull scheme is another name from F2 I would throw into the hat if he could become more consistant as on pace he is the quickest by a mile.

I Think F2 has about 5 or 6 top drivers with very good experience the rest I am not so sure on. Like I mentioned in another thread a lot have come from FPA and that is a massive jump. Jason Moore last seasons FPA champion hasn't really done anything this year. Maybe it was just to make the numbers up this year and in the future it will catch on and drivers with more expereince will enter.

One intresting thing about F2 the top 3 drivers all get a super licence at the end of the season which no other series does.

For 200k a season it is a great idea and I hope the series catches on more and gets better entrants like all these drivers who are struggling to get a budget together for GP2.

Two seasons. Like many in F3 Euro probably know, you cant win the title until you're at ART, which Grosjean wasn't in his first year.

Anyways, a decent first race weekend. Pretty impressive in practice and qualifying. Race was a bit less smooth, but he finished and managed 9th fastest time(ahead of Alonso).

I'd say he's on track so far.

A ) Piquet did not have tons of miles in F1

B) Piquet is not a farce, look at the tread "Nelson Piquet seems faster now" concerning your
provocative comment on F3 SudAm 2002 and the interdiction of testing. Piquet ( and only Piquet )
was forbidden to test, while his competitors in F3 SudAm were allowed to test !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

C) See the exact quote from Auto, Motor und Sport underneath, it is Fahrernoten GP Europe
Romain Grosjean: Note 5
Die drei Zehntel Rückstand auf Teamkollege Alonso im Qualifying waren aller Ehren wert, bis sich herausstellte, dass der Spanier mit einem
Bremsproblem rund sechs Zehntel pro Runde verlor. So verlor die Leistung Grosjeans etwas an Wert. Im Rennen sorgten die Startkollision und ein
Highspeed-Dreher für großen Rückstand. Da fragt man sich, warum Nelson Piquet gehen musste.

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel-...la-1386024.html

I fully agree with this comment

Piquet drove for a season and a half of racing, plus testing duties for RF1 before and during, plus a couple of other brief tests.

Wasnt the brake problem of big Fernando reported to have been occured only in Q3?
As for race Romain was similarly fast as Alonso over the whole stint, so we are not speaking about the fastest lap only.

I havn't read all the posts so this might be repeating -

http://fialive.fiacommunications.com/en-GB...ace_sectors.pdf

pretty impressive for outright speed , which seems to support what some have said

I'll certainly look forward to seeing how he gets on at spa

lol, Grosjean has a daily job.
He works in a bank.

http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/news/2009/08/26/...ve-up-bank-job/

His hair is too crazy for a banker! He's been working there for a while, I think I first read about it after he won F3 Euro.

One thing is for sure, Grosjean is a smart guy:

"I think there’s a different spirit of building the car. In GP2 all the cars are the same and the ground effect is quite big compared to the aero and in Formula One we are using more aerodynamic downforce than ground effect, so in the end it makes the race much harder to fight and to get close to another car."

Now there's a solution... unless the people in F1 are too scared to bring back ground effect.