How Grosjean made Haas give another F1 lifeline

Three months ago Romain Grosjean was in peril. After the British Grand Prix, he had registered just a single points finish in 10 races - albeit for an outstanding drive to fourth place in Austria - and questions were being asked about his Formula 1 future following a series of costly mishaps. This could not go on.

It didn't. In the following six weekends, from the German Grand Prix that Grosjean himself cites as the turning point, he has performed strongly and earned himself a new Haas deal. And when Grosjean is at his best, he's fast. Seriously fast.

When Grosjean's deal was announced ahead of qualifying in Russia last weekend, some scoffed. But team owner Gene Haas was right to retain a driver capable of delivering outstanding results now that he has turned things around. Grosjean can be frustrating, but he's exactly the kind of driver F1 needs to retain.

From Germany onwards, Grosjean has been among the best drivers on the grid. In particular, his string of four top 10 finishes from Germany to Italy, the latter for sixth on the road before being disqualified for a floor irregularity that Haas has appealed. So what's changed? Inevitably, it's not only him.

The car update introduced in Canada in June eliminated the understeer that Grosjean had complained about early on. Interestingly, team-mate Kevin Magnussen claimed the car didn't have this trait - because he enjoys a stable rear that allows him to carry speed into the corner - but Grosjean's pace picked up. But still he needed to ensure he had his head together.

"I knew the car was fast since winter testing, but the feeling wasn't great earlier in the year," says Grosjean. "I had a lot of understeer, and Canada was a bit of a turning point with the updates. It gave me a better feeling for the car.

"But it was more getting myself into form, in the zone and understanding why I was taking the wrong decisions. Sometimes it happens and maybe I left it a bit too long before realising what was going wrong. What were the issues? It could be personal, could be professional, and I knew when I got to Germany things were sorted and I was back to where I wanted to be."

To his credit, Grosjean has approached this process constructively. He's never been afraid to talk about the role his sports psychologist has played. While some may interpret that as a weakness, surely it's a show of strength to accept that there's a problem in yourself and address it.

Had he not done so, his future could look very different. What's unquestionable is that things were going wrong. Those misjudgements were costing significant points.

Grosjean crashed under the safety car while running sixth in Azerbaijan, he spun on the first lap of the Spanish Grand Prix and wiped out Pierre Gasly and Nico Hulkenberg, and he crashed on his first Q3 run in France before clashing with Esteban Ocon at the start. At Silverstone he hit Magnussen on the first lap, a move many overlooked amid the controversy over Kimi Raikkonen collecting Lewis Hamilton.

At this point, many teams would start to work their way through a shortlist of potential replacements. But not Haas. Team principal Gunther Steiner explains that the priority was always to get Grosjean back on form, partly because the Franco-Swiss driver has been an integral part of the remarkable rise of the team, partly through the purely selfish measure that most teams would benefit from a driver of Grosjean's calibre when performing well.

As Steiner points out, there's no guarantee any replacement would have the same pace as Grosjean. Of those drivers without a seat, perhaps only Ocon is in that bracket, but he's tied to Mercedes. So why risk a downgrade, and the instability a driver change brings?

In reality, it's a small readjustment, one focused on ensuring Grosjean makes the right decisions

Grosjean had to prove he was the driver of old and not trapped in a never-ending spiral, or the team would have had no choice but to go elsewhere. Had that happened, that would probably have been the end for Grosjean in F1.

"You didn't have to explain that to him, he knew it and he wasn't happy with all the incidents which happened," says Steiner, who backed Grosjean in public consistently, but at Silverstone did hint that there might be a limit to his tolerance.

"We just wanted to make sure that he was back to his old [level]. In life you sometimes have situations when it feels like 'this is never ending', and I think he was in one of these.

"Everybody deserves a second chance, especially someone who was with us from the first year and part of our little success of surviving the first year, getting points, not being last, which didn't happen for a long time. He was part of that. And that is why we signed him again."

The relationship that had been built up by Grosjean, who showed the confidence to sign up with Haas for 2016, has been key to him being given the time to get on top of things. While some in the team were frustrated, there was always the will for Grosjean to get back on top of things.

And while his first half of the season was indeed poor, there were weekends where he failed to score because of problems outside his control. In Australia he drove well but, like Magnussen, retired when a pitstop went wrong. Then came the problem in Bahrain and struggles on medium-compound Pirellis in China that also cost points. Car issues in Monaco and hitting traffic in qualifying in Canada also cost him.

So it wasn't just his own mistakes. But it all adds up to the intense pressure that made Grosjean more susceptible to errors. Which brings us back to Grosjean himself. Specifically, what exactly has he done to deliver this outcome? You might call it a reset, but he doesn't. In reality, it's a small readjustment, one focused on ensuring he makes the right decisions.

"It's not a reset," he says. "I don't want to go too much into details but it can be from the birth of your third child to the feeling in the car to bad luck in Bahrain [where he would have finished eighth but for his car shedding aero parts], to a lot of small things together.

"If you accumulate them and don't understand them, don't let them go, then you always try to do things that don't work. Like Q3 in France where I was safely seventh on the grid and on the first run [on used rubber] I wanted to say, 'Let's have an amazing lap' when there was no need. Why did I decide that lap? I spun and crashed - it was rubbish.

"There are a lot of things you can look at, explain and try to understand. When I did realise what was going on, I was back on it."

It's unusual to hear a grand prix driver being so frank about such misjudgements. But Grosjean is a driver who has had to go through processes of soul-searching before. Each time, he has come back stronger.

Having been dropped by Renault after his part-season in 2009, he washed up in GT racing and worked his way back into single-seaters by winning the AutoGP title, then GP2, earning a second F1 break.

There were points when things went badly wrong there, but he regrouped again and strung together an outstanding second half of 2013. Remember his race-leading turn in the Japanese Grand Prix? He was that good. The key is knowing how hard to push. Grosjean hasn't won a race since his GP2 title-winning campaign in 2011, but knows he is a race-winning driver.

Put Grosjean in one of the top three teams and he would be mixing it with Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel

Central to Grosjean's improved form is being able to judge what's possible with the machinery and to set the bar accordingly, rather than letting his ambition dare him to attempt to bend the unyielding laws of physics.

"That's not easy, is it?" says Grosjean. "The challenge is not to lose the fact you want to be world champion, but on the other hand know where you are. Some years, my problem has been I wanted too much. I wanted more than what we were doing last year, for example, because I haven't lost that wish to be world champion one day.

"I could easily say I'm happy, I've made good money, I drive [in] F1 but I always want more because I am a perfectionist. I find balancing that thing between knowing what you can do, what you want and where you can set the bar - that's the beauty of sport.

"That's very much a frustration of F1, whereas if you are a tennis player or a swimming, there's more frustration going into the training every day. But in competition, it's you - you are relying on yourself."

Grosjean makes the comparison with Alonso. Both drivers want to be able to enjoy the challenge of racing hard for victories, but are frustrated not just by machinery not being up to it, but also the fact that there's little prospect of their cars being anything more than 'Class B' contenders in the coming years.

He also talks about the fact that, when in a frontrunning car, it's easy to look like a hero whatever you do, whereas in the cut and thrust of the midfield strong performances are too easily overlooked.

Steiner believes Grosjean has made a step in calibrating the objectives to be realistic ones. Sometimes, seventh is the best you can do.

"I would say he has got better, he just needs his focus" says Steiner. "He said he has found the key to how to be consistent. With age, you get better at this. With him, it's the emotions. I'm no psychologist, but he never accepts having a bad weekend, he wants to make up for it and that sometimes goes a different way.

"Sometimes you need to live with the fact that you won't be in Q3, so be the best in Q2. He wants everything, but he's got better at saying 'I don't need it all, I need what's possible'."

After the Spanish Grand Prix crash, I called Grosjean "an unsolvable problem" precisely because he's capable of great things, but sometimes cannot avoid falling into troughs where things unravel.

It's a similar thing with his mentality, as on the one hand he appears fragile, but on the other has repeatedly bounced back from periods that would have broken lesser drivers. That ability to recover is an admirable one for a driver.

Grosjean will remain one of the fastest - bar none - drivers on the grid, but also one who sometimes frustrates

Grosjean is a likeable character, among the most 'human' of all the drivers on the grid. He might not be a ruthless sporting machine, but he's an emotional character who most want to see doing well.

Ayao Komatsu, Haas's chief race engineer who moved to the team from Enstone with Grosjean, has hinted that while 'his' driver can be emotional and sometimes that's a weak point, if you take away something that can be a weakness it might also compromise his strengths.

Realistically, Grosjean has been around long enough for it to be likely that there will be occasional lows - but surely not as sustained as the series of mistakes that blighted the early stages of the year.

For that reason, he will remain one of the fastest - bar none - drivers on the grid, but also one who sometimes frustrates. He's an enigma, both in terms of performance, and his curious combination of apparent mental fragility and robustness.

"Human beings, we are all the same - we have good days and bad days," says Steiner. "I always hope to have more good days than bad days and I normally have. You have to have a positive outlook, but you can have a bad day and you need to live with that, it's not the end of the world. We all have them.

"It's the same for a driver. He's more exposed than anybody else because there's only 20 on the grid and as soon as you make a mistake, millions of people have an opinion about you. If I make a mistake, nobody notices because who am I?"

Some think Steiner, and Haas, have made a mistake by keeping Grosjean. But they haven't. Put him in one of the top three teams and he would be mixing it with Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel on those weekends when he's on form.

The key is that he needs to, and has, embraced what constitutes a 'victory' in the midfield and ensure those weekends are in the majority.

That's why Haas had to re-sign him.