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Haas insists Grosjean’s drive is safe after Baku and Spain crashes

Haas F1 boss Guenther Steiner says that Romain Grosjean's future at the team has not been threatened by high-profile incidents in the last two grand prix races

Grosjean crashed behind the safety car in Azerbaijan, and then triggered a collision with Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly when he spun on the first lap in Spain.

The latter incident earned him a three-place grid penalty for this weekend's Monaco Grand Prix. But Steiner insists that there has been no internal debate about Grosjean's future.

"We didn't even speak about it," he said.

"When somebody has two bad races there's no point to start rumours, or to start to do things about it.

"The only thing that we need to do is to get Romain back to where he is capable of competing - we all know [he] is a very capable guy.

"I'm not a person when if someone's on his knees I try to kick him, that's unfair.

"He knows better than all of us what not to do, [after] Baku and Barcelona.

"But can it happen again? Yes, it could. It's Monte Carlo. But just to stop the rumours, there was never talk about that."

Steiner has tried to encourage Grosjean to look for positives and feels that it is his responsibility to make sure the Frenchman moves on from the incidents.

"During the [Spain] race I went to speak to him, because I know how you feel when something like this happens, we've all had bad moments," he said.

"I said, 'just get over it, there's no point to dwell on it. You know what you can do, get over it, focus, the next race is coming - be positive'.

"Because if you go in negative, just negatives come out [and] snowball.

"We need to be positive about it, we know how good he is in Monte Carlo, and that is what we are focussing on."

Steiner reckons it's vital for Grosjean's recovery to start with a strong run of practice on Thursday.

"It's always important to have a good day of practice, and sometimes it didn't happen," he said.

"Maybe more than ever it is important here.

"You need to build up [at Monaco], so hopefully we have no drama to go into a good race.

"The car is capable of doing a lot this year. He just needs to have one event [to] go well for him, without drama, and he'll be alright again. "I'm very much convinced about that."

Steiner accepts Grosjean's Barcelona penalty was inevitable, but stressed that he wants the FIA to be consistent with its sanctions.

"In the emotion [at the time] I would say it's harsh, [but] looking back now you cannot not do anything, because then where do we end up?

"He didn't do anything intentionally, he didn't do [it to] run into anybody.

"For me, more consistency [is] what we need to achieve in these penalties, so the next time somebody else does something similar, I hope he gets the same penalty."

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