Romain Grosjean, Haas, Imola, 2020

Grosjean: Russell only driver to message me after losing Haas seat

2020 F1 season

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Haas driver Romain Grosjean has revealed George Russell sent him a message of sympathy after the team announced last month it would not retain either of its drivers for the 2021 F1 season.

Grosjean and team mate Kevin Magnussen are without drives for next year following Haas’s decision to replace both of them.

Russell crashed out of the previous round at Imola behind the Safety Car, which prompted Grosjean to send him a public message of support.

“I’ve had a good relationship with George,” said Grosjean. “When the announcement was made that I wasn’t going to be with the team next season, he was the first and only one to send me a WhatsApp message. That really shows that he’s a great guy.”

Grosjean believes Russell made a similar mistake to his crash during the 2018 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

“I know how painful it is to crash under a Safety Car period – especially when it’s going to be your first point of the season,” he said. “I believe it was the same for me at Baku in 2018.

“In the lower part of the field, you really need to work the tyres a lot. I’ve said it many times, if I was doing Baku again, I’d probably do the same thing as I did three seasons ago.

“George didn’t do anything crazy, but he just lost the car. It was a tough day for him, but he’ll have plenty more [good days] to come.”

Lewis Hamilton also publicly messaged Russell following the crash. As RaceFans revealed last week, Russell wrote a letter to his Williams team to apologise for losing what could have been their first points score of the season.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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27 comments on “Grosjean: Russell only driver to message me after losing Haas seat”

  1. i’ll start off by saying that I started typing this before there are any comments. By the time I post it, I bet that this stupid tedious “I think Ericsson hit us” will be brought up.

    Anyway, I was going to mention that time that Grosjean and Russell tangled in Singapore, he sounded like he had some hate towards him there. Although it may have just been in that moment. But I think both had equal blame there.

    These two safety car crashes by both of them were certainly clumsy and hopefully Russell won’t make a mistake like that again. Despite what Many think, I think Grosjean is a fair bit better than he was early in 2018.

    1. yey, i made it as the first comment without that getting brought up by anyone!

    2. It’s always said every time. Every. Single. Time.
      But on the other side I wonder who will be the third one to crash under safety car…

      1. Well Hamilton was one of them who hit the barrier one time during the safety car last year, so it isn’t just drivers with a bad reputation.

        1. But Grosjean was the only one blaming a other driver…

          1. You say the “Ericsson hit us” line is tedious but didn’t Ericsson recently joke about it himself too? Like I’m sure both of them see the funny side of it, so I have no issue with the joke.

            Bit sad to hear only Russell got in touch with him. Although nice someone did. Grosjean was never a bad driver, though does seem to have both very good and very bad days. Certainly capable of taking a win or three if he had the car though. It’ll be a shame to see him go.

          2. someone or something
            9th November 2020, 13:27

            @macleod
            He never did. That was his engineer. This has been debunked like a trillion times.

          3. It was his engineer that said it, why dont you understand that by now? Everyone knew that in the week of the incident.

        2. He did, but he continued.

          1. @rocketpanda

            No it’s just tedious finding out how many actually believe Grosjean thought that, and still think the same over 2 years later.

          2. I think that since Spain 2018, Grosjean hasn’t been wholly at fault for his own or anyone else’s retirement. He’s been a much cleaner driver since then, but often does push to the limit of the rules.

            He’s been involved in an awful lot of bad luck leading to retirements ( well over 10 since then) but none have been him simply crashing out. They have either involved another driver or shocking bad luck / reliability. He’s been nothing like as bad as he used to be the past couple of years and has had a couple of very solid drives this year.

    3. I agree. Over the last two seasons and the second half of 2018, Grosjean has been at least as good as Magnussen, if not slightly better, and last year he deserved more points than he got. He no longer has silly crashes, but in fairness 2009, 2012 and 2018 are probably the only three years where he has had silly crashes, so it is quite unfair that he has picked up this reputation for crashing all the time.

    4. Actually i remember a funny picture both drivers posted on their instagram after the race. both were on the same private jet with some other drivers, and grosjean captioned it along the lines of “flying with friends… and goerge” Russell also did a similar instagram post too… all in good spirits ofcourse. I remember laughing at that! Im sure they got over that incident swiftly @thegianthogweed

    5. I am glad to see Grosjean being dropped. He never deserved seat in F1. Hulk would have been a better option for Haas. They know they made a mistake and they are finally fixing it. Hope they make a better decision this time around choosing their future drivers.

  2. The internet age and how quickly we arrive at conclusions because the regular mails don’t come in enough time.

    1. Yes a little over 25 years since email was widely available

  3. I know that it’s the camera angle but my God for that long neck! A few more centimetres more and he’d compete with a giraffe!

    1. thnx, now I can’t unsee it

  4. Russell is a class act, he also messaged Kubica straight away after his first DTM podium. He has respect for his racing colleagues. Grosjean, i liked hin when he started F1, but it fell away and he vecane a making up the numbers driver.

    1. You’ve got a terrible cold, have you tried lemsip?

  5. When I just opened Racefans, above Grosjean’s picture is an add for “Used Haas Machinery”

  6. Russel will take his seat?

    1. He is confirmed for Williams so why would he?

  7. This reminds me of Massa a few years back: “Kimi didn’t send me a get well message…”
    Why don’t we all write in wishing Gros well in FE

  8. Being a professional driver, I don’t see the lack of communication from the other F1 drivers as unusual, especially if they suspect he’s not meeting company expectations. For example, Nico has 10 points on the WDC board, and he’s done just three races this year. What’s Gunther Steiner supposed to think when he looks at the WDC table and sees a driver he rejected getting more points than one he was loyal too? It’s a bit surprising Romain had gotten even one message of support.

    1. So Nico in a car that very closely mimics the WCC winning car in 2019, got more points in 3 races than one of the lowest teams on the grid.

      Who would have thought car performance has a say in how many points a driver gets?

  9. I am sure that if other drivers had something nice to say about him or his driving they would come forward and say it. As a Frenchman I am delighted that he is out of F1. To me he is such an embarrassment, taking a place in F1 when so many more competent drivers could have done a better job keeping their car on the track or in one piece, not to mention keeping their mouths shut when they have nothing useful to say. It’s truly unbelievable that he had a 10 year career…

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