Critics of Haas/Ferrari F1 ties are just jealous

Haas is the first F1 squad to take full advantage of the 'listed parts' regulations and is using Ferrari components for all elements of the car that the rules allow.

It has made a spectacular start to life in F1, with Grosjean finishing sixth and fifth in Haas's first two grands prix, but sceptics have downplayed the achievement because of the Ferrari affiliation.

Asked by Autosport if he felt Haas's critics were jealous, Grosjean replied: "100 per cent.

"There are two approaches - the Claire Williams approach, which is very nice, saying it's very good for Formula 1 that there's a new team coming, on top of that an American team, and being successful, it opens up the audience, opens it up to a big country, opens ideas up to other people that want to join Formula 1, and I am sure we would love to see 24, 26, 28 cars on the grid, it would be awesome.

"And then there are the people who are just jealous because they haven't achieved what we have done so far. They're just saying 'it's a Ferrari base, it's not the way it should be'. Come on..."

Grosjean said he was not working with Ferrari any more than he had with Mercedes when it supplied his previous team Lotus's engines in 2015, and insisted there was ample difference between the Ferrari and Haas cars.

"It's a completely different philosophy," he said.

"If you look at the wings, the sidepods, the nose, it's a Haas car.

"Yes we've got the mechanical parts from Ferrari, which saves us a lot of hassle. But the rest is a Haas car."

But he acknowledged elements of the design concept had an inevitable Ferrari influence given the shared components and that this was likely to be a factor in some parts of Haas's performance.

"Mechanically we have the suspension and gearbox from Ferrari so that's the philosophy that we have to use," Grosjean said.

"They were good on tyres last year, we are good on tyres this year."

Although Haas has use of Ferrari's simulator, Grosjean said it was not possible to spend extensive time there and he would not visit it again until after Monaco in May.

"Esteban [Gutierrez] went last week. I didn't, because we've got small resources," he said.

"It's a bit complicated to send the engineers to a simulator and then we lose time at the factory."