Austrian GP: Driver Preview Quotes - Haas

DRIVER PREVIEW QUOTES - HAAS F1 TEAM

Romain Grosjean - "It's a funny place to race being in the middle of the mountains. The circuit is very short. The lap time is almost like Monaco. There are some overtaking opportunities. The track, in general, has two very different parts. I quite like the middle sector. There are medium- to high-speed corners. You've got turn one and turn two, which are very similar. Both are 90-degree turns with big braking and long, straight lines. You've then got the second part which is more flowing.

You start with big braking into turn one, a 90-degree corner. It's very important to go early on the power. There's then a long straight line going up to turn two where you brake very late into the corner, and there's a change of camber. You go flat again after that to turn three. Again, tricky braking there as you're going downhill. Then you've got a double-left corner, medium- to high-speed turns. The last couple of turns are the same as you go up the hill and then down again. It can be pretty tricky, but if you get the grip under the car and a good balance, it can be a lot of fun to drive.

It was a shame about the race in Baku that we had to have the extra pit stop. I think we could have scored points. We were looking pretty good up until that point. Some of the races we're now going to should be better for us. We still need to work on getting the best out of the tires when it's cold. We have some graining issues as well, but we're still a brand new team and we haven't had many options to try different things. We're going in a good direction even though we haven't scored points in a while."

Esteban Gutierrez - "It's quite unique because it's a little bit old school and has a lot of fast corners, which I enjoy a lot. It's a pretty short circuit – not many corners – so the times are pretty tight, and very competitive in qualifying. It's an extra challenge to make everything as perfect as possible, or as close to perfect as possible.

I love the two fast corners to the left on the infield, which makes it very interesting, and also the last part when you enter into a very high-speed corner after the back-straight, followed by a banked corner. It's pretty nice to go through there. The wind makes some effects because you have the trees, which are pretty high, so the wind is flowing in some parts of the circuit in a different way than in others, so it makes it a bit more challenging in that way."

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Article Posted By: Amy Hawk
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