Why Grosjean deserves his second chance

So, two interesting early morning announcements in 10 days from Renault: first Kimi Raikkonen, and now Romain Grosjean.

Although I have sympathy for Bruno Senna and hope he gets a Formula 1 seat elsewhere, the Grosjean signing is quite exciting. It does look as though the team that will become Lotus next year has gone out and signed the quickest pair of drivers it could have, knowing that Robert Kubica was not an option.

With the F1 testing regulations as they are today, it's mighty difficult for a young driver to make an impression. Grosjean showed promise in 2009 but didn't get a fair crack of the whip in difficult circumstances.

Ironically enough, Grosjean got his foot in the door just as Raikkonen was on the way out in '09. It was an open secret that Ferrari was preparing to pay the Finn off and take Fernando Alonso a year early.

At Renault, meanwhile, the fateful decision had been taken to replace Nelson Piquet Jr and put Grosjean in alongside Alonso.

Grosjean, born in Geneva and with dual Swiss/French nationality (he races under a French licence), made his F1 debut aged 23 at Valencia's European Grand Prix.

The Renault was not a strong car in '09 and it caught the attention when Grosjean set a Q1 time just 0.17s shy of Alonso as the pair of them advanced to Q2.

Grosjean's hopes of a strong debut ended in bizarre circumstances on the opening lap, when he tapped Luca Badoer's Ferrari. Seeing shards of carbon-fibre front wing fly skywards, Grosjean assumed they were his and pitted. In fact they belonged to Sebastien Buemi's Toro Rosso.

At Spa, Grosjean collided with Jenson Button's Brawn on the first lap at Les Combes, and there was more first lap damage at Monza where, again, he qualified impressively, just 0.23s shy of Alonso.

Clash with Button at Spa summed up Grosjean's 2009 F1 promotion © LAT

Singapore was exactly a year on from the Renault shenanigans of 2008. By this time the Piquets had turned supergrass and Renault was a team in turmoil, with Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds in the mire and Bob Bell promoted to team principal.

And so it was not with the greatest of timing that Grosjean aped Piquet's trip into the Turn 17 wall on Friday.

At first everyone thought they were watching yet another rerun of Piquet's crash from the previous season... On the pit wall, poor Bell's mouth fell so far open he almost swallowed his monitor.

If you look at Grosjean's qualifying performances versus Alonso, there were the Valencia, Spa and Yas Marina events, at which he was within 0.3s. But the average deficit over the seven races was more like 0.5s, skewed by bigger gaps at rain-afflicted Interlagos and in Singapore, where Grosjean struggled with his brakes throughout.

When you hear "there's a problem with the brakes," you tend to assume it's a car problem. I recall being sufficiently impressed by Grosjean's pace proximity to Alonso at two of the three previous races to seek out Renault's experienced race engineering chief, Alan Permane.

Permane was open and informative and, I remember, not excessively long on sympathy. In truth, he was probably just relieved to be talking about something technical rather than the increasingly widespread media assumption that he was 'Witness X' in the FIA's leaked documentation over the Piquet affair...

And also, having run embryonic talents in the form of Michael Schumacher and Alonso in the past, so the senior personnel were unlikely to be overly excited by a rookie who'd been involved in three successive first-lap incidents, even if he was within a few tenths of a Fernando they suspected might be less than 100 per cent motivated.

Singapore is tough on brake temperature, and that can lead to glazing. It is exacerbated if the driver rides the pedal, and Permane confirmed that it was only a problem on one car. It was an issue Grosjean couldn't rid himself of, and he qualified the best part of a second behind Alonso before retiring after three laps.

A lack of testing hampered Grosjean against Alonso in 2009 © LAT

Alonso, meanwhile, demotivated or not, turned in one of his typically relentless Sunday afternoons in the other car and finished up on the podium.

By now, it was all about survival at Renault. BMW was pulling out, Toyota was going and, if Renault followed suit and took its engines, F1 had a problem.

The whisper in the paddock was that there might even have been a deal done. Politically, it suited the governing body to see the back of Briatore. But maybe the damage done to the Renault brand, via the public humiliation that a ban from the sport would bring, could be avoided if only the team could be kept afloat and engine supply assured...

Who knows? But one thing certain is that the immediate future of Grosjean wasn't high on anybody's agenda.

They say timing is everything and Grosjean's couldn't really have been much worse. What also didn't help was that it wasn't that long since Lewis Hamilton had arrived fresh from GP2 and done a stunning job in the same team as Alonso.

That, though, was very different. That was after 10,000 miles of winter testing in a very good car, against a driver who was coming to a new team and switching to Bridgestones after driving Michelins all his F1 life. And if you think tyres don't matter too much, speak to Schumacher or Mark Webber. Yes, the good ones adapt, as Alonso did, but it takes time.

Recently, I had an interesting chat about young drivers with Jacky Eeckelaert, currently heading up the technical team at HRT. Highly experienced and still as enthusiastic as ever, Eeckelaert has seen a lot of young guys come into F1. He is another who thinks Grosjean had it tough but is talented, and also thinks that the scenario facing the youngsters now, without testing and with pressure to immediately perform, is probably tougher than it's ever been.

In the light of the Red Bull driver situation - Jaime Alguersuari, Buemi, Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne - I was interested in his experiences with the young Australian at HRT, especially having spoken to Toro Rosso's Giorgio Ascanelli about him.

Ricciardo made his F1 race debut in 2011 with HRT © LAT

"Ricciardo is a good kid," Ascanelli said, "but I didn't think he was daring enough. Every Friday morning he was within a tenth of his team-mate but every weekend he did, he was lucky because we had a second set of tyres for development and he could get in the groove.

"If you're within a tenth of your team-mate and don't put a foot wrong, that's good. He never put a wheel off the circuit, so he had margin, which was another good sign. Maybe he was targeting doing what he needed without taking risks.

"I don't think he did a bad job and I rate his feedback, I enjoyed his smiling face around the paddock but, on the other side, frankly, I think he missed the chance to do more. I think he had bullets in his belt and simply didn't shoot them.

"He was content with what he achieved, which is wise, but... it was Thomas Edison who said genius was one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent setting high targets. But he's [Ricciardo] bright."

Eeckelaert made a similar point about Ricciardo's spare capacity.

"I was happy we had [Vitantonio] Liuzzi in the car because he's a known quantity. Daniel takes his time to come up to speed but in the end is the same speed or similar - sometimes faster, sometimes slower.

"He got there very quickly for a rookie and without any mistakes; no spins, not even a flat-spot, nothing. That was very impressive. There were lots of others, even those with more experience like Bruno Senna, flying off left and right.

"In India, Daniel was doing a very impressive first stint and then at the pitstop the wheel nut was not fixed properly and he had to come back in. Therefore he finished behind Narain [Karthikeyan], but he had been pulling away. It's hard for these guys because at the back they're not really on the radar and people don't notice.

"But Ricciardo got more out of the car than was really in it - especially in race conditions. I think he has big potential."

Eeckelaert thinks the tempered approach is perhaps symptomatic of the times, when seat time is so limited that drivers are scared of messing up, something Ascanelli has said in the past about both Alguersuari and Buemi.

In what is increasingly a one-shot saloon - if you're fortunate enough to get that far - I'm interested to see what Grosjean serves up with his rare second chance. I could be wrong, but I reckon he'll keep Kimi very honest.