Why Grosjean is F1's unsolvable problem

What was he thinking? That's the question most asked after Romain Grosjean wiped out Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly - not to mention his own Haas - on the first lap of the Spanish Grand Prix.

It wasn't so much that he lost it in the first place; it happens. But Grosjean's reaction, keeping the rears lit and harpooning across the track in a cloud of tyre smoke rather than getting on the brakes, was baffling. That crash, within the wider context of Grosjean's 2018 season so far, reveals a lot about the most infuriating driver on the Formula 1 grid.

It's too easy, and completely wrong, simply to write off Grosjean as a talentless idiot, an out-of-his-depth crash-magnet. This is a driver with 10 podium finishes to his name, who has led a grand prix on merit and scored points in 48 races. That didn't happen by good luck, but by the same token you can't put his mishaps down to bad luck.

Grosjean's defence when the stewards investigated the incident was that he was going to spin into the middle of the pack anyway, so it was logical for him to try to get across the circuit. He argued that as the racing line was towards the outside of the track, that was the safest place. The three-place grid penalty he was given and the tone of the stewards' decision, who did consider a larger drop, suggested this argument wasn't entirely bought.

As the stewards' statement pointed out, there was certainly a point where he could have got on the brakes and spun to the outside, and while it's dangerous to watch endless replays and declare what a driver should or shouldn't have done in the heat of the moment, Grosjean's decision-making must be questioned. It had the air of a driver hanging on beyond the point of no return through sheer desperation to get the result he needed.

Elite sport is a mental game. The spread in fundamental skill, however you want to measure that, over the whole 20-driver F1 grid is pretty small. What makes the difference is the ability to keep it all together mentally. That's where you get your sustained performance, the consistency to deliver lap after lap, race after race, to dance the line between triumph and disaster, to put the errors behind you and concentrate on the next success.

If you miss the apex at Turn 1, you can never get what you've lost back. Those who try to take the following corner at 101% to recover that ground just lose further, but the best regroup and focus on achieving 100%. On paper that sounds very straightforward. But in the heat of competition it's hugely difficult, doubly so with the eyes of the world on you and a career at stake.

This was Grosjean's ninth-consecutive race without points, which brings pressure. He also threw away at least a sixth-place finish in Baku with another error, crashing under the safety car when he leaped on the brakes while trying to keep things warm.

Yes, the fact that a mistaken switch change contributed to that partly explains a baffling incident, but it's still a driver's input and Grosjean's responsibility. And it hit him hard.

Ahead of the race in Spain, it seemed that the stabilising influence of his family, something he has spoken regularly about the value of in the past and which has often been cited as a hugely positive influence on him, had helped to eliminate the Azerbaijan hangover.

"I was lucky that my boys were there - my girl, she's tiny and she doesn't speak much yet - but I got home late on Monday night and Sascha, my oldest, came to me. 'Daddy, daddy, your race was amazing - you started last and you were up to P6 and it was great'," said Grosjean.

"I think my wife had told him what to say. He was so positive about it, he made me cry."

After Webber visited Grosjean's driver room via a knock on the door best described as forceful, it did change how Grosjean behaved on the first lap of the next race

Grosjean is a likable character, and one of the more frank and honest drivers on the grid. This was a compelling and personal way to respond to the inevitable questions about the impact the crash had on him. But while it certainly will have helped him when out of the cockpit, you still have to wonder if the Barcelona Turn 3 crash was connected to what had happened in Baku.

In normal circumstances, might he have just let the car spin safely to the outside rather than hanging on, hoping against hope? And had things not gone so badly so far this season and that pressure not been on his shoulders, might he not have spun at all, given how eager he would have been not to get caught up with team-mate Kevin Magnussen as the sister Haas slid across his bows after a rear-end wobble?

When Grosjean had his infamous clash with Mark Webber at the start of the 2012 Japanese Grand Prix (below), which led to the Australian branding him a first-lap nutcase, it had an effect on him in the next race. After Webber stormed into the Lotus paddock office after the race and visited Grosjean's driver room via a knock on the door best described as forceful, his face like thunder, it did change how the then-Lotus driver behaved on the first lap of the next race.

"He broke the door," recalls Grosjean. "He could've punched me right there and I wouldn't say anything. He was in the right. I was well aware I'd made a massive mistake. But after that, in Korea, at the start I lost three positions because everyone knew I was trying to stay out of trouble."

We can't answer the question of what role the previous incident played in the Spain start crash, but can only understand that different people respond in different ways. No driver exists in a vacuum. The fact those questions are valid provides a glimpse into the mind of the driver. These pressures will have been multiplied by Magnussen's fine form and signs he is becoming the main man at a team that has been Grosjean's since 2016.

To Grosjean's immense credit, he has embraced the use of a sports psychologist for several years now. This is a sensible move despite the fact some, less enlightened, critics believe it's a sign of weakness. For Grosjean it has become hugely valuable.

"It's really interesting about being a racing driver, being a man as well, and a father and a husband, and coming back home and not bringing all the problems that you've had at your work to your home," he says.

"A lot of divorces happen because people have got problems in their jobs and then they come home and they're not in a good mood, whatever, it impacts your life. So, it's like two glasses of water, and one goes in the other one, and it always balances itself.

"It's just finding that right sweet spot, and that's why I like it. I use a trainer to get fitter, to get better muscle, to get leaner. I use an engineer to set up my car - why wouldn't I use a psychologist to get a better brain and make sure it's working better?"

Grosjean is a driver who lives on the edge. He wants a car that is perfectly suited to his driving style, which he has often cited as being the old ART (nee ASM) school in Formula 3. Turn in hard, decisively on the brakes with a bit of rear-end rotation on entry.

That explains why he often complains about the feel of the brakes (although it should be noted he is much happier with them now), and believes the Haas is better suited to Magnussen's driving style given the Dane is happier with an understeer balance.

We talk about drivers being 'on the limit', but the definition of that varies from driver to driver. Often, the one circulating seemingly on rails is far closer to that limit than someone visibly working hard, all corrections and adjustments.

Grosjean too often tries to force the issue in the cockpit. He often lacks the ability a driver like old team-mate Fernando Alonso has to hustle a car positively. It's about adapting what you are doing to get the reaction you want out of the car. The best are proactive, rather than reactive.

"I use a trainer to get fit; an engineer to set-up my car; why wouldn't I use a psychologist to get a better brain?" Romain Grosjean

This means Grosjean has a very specific set of demands for a car, something that often it does not give him. And when everything is right, everything is in sync, he can be stunningly fast - to the point where you'd say there's no one faster. That's not hyperbole, it's proved by what we sometimes see from him.

Grosjean has spent time trying to get the rear-end livelier this year, and he's been happy with the progress made. But at the same time, he had multiple off track moments on Friday and Saturday in Spain, which suggests all is not well even though he pointed to an inconsistency caused by the tyres as the reason behind this.

"The rear can take very little [on the resurfaced track] and when I went off, I tried a different-shape map," he said after a trip through the gravel in Q2 gave him minor damage that cost a few points of downforce for the top 10 shootout. "On the data, we don't see much rear locking, but for some reason it just tipped over the rear.

"The braking was the same, the entry speed was the same, so if you align the data there is no difference between the two laps. But we don't have the metrics to measure if it's doing something that we are not understanding."

If Grosjean was simply a driver with a little psychological frailty and a limited driving style, we could write him off. The high points he's achieved make him a more puzzling case.

It's a long time ago now, but while many recall his time at Lotus for similar high-profile incidents, such as the aforementioned Webber clash and being banned for triggering the Spa start shunt earlier in the same year, most forget just how good he was in the second half of 2013.

He did have a difficult first half of 2013, peaking with a horrible Monaco Grand Prix weekend on which he was fast but had a litany of incidents. But then he started to build momentum and he was arguably second only to Sebastian Vettel in terms of his performances over the second half of the year.

At this point, the Lotus (now Renault) team calculated Grosjean had three-tenths of a second a lap underlying speed advantage over Kimi Raikkonen, and at times it showed. His drive to second in the United States Grand Prix, splitting the Red Bulls, was outstanding.

"The first time I led a grand prix in Japan, what was going through my mind?" he says. "I was like 'if you put the car in the gravel right now, the whole world is going to see it'. I was fully confident, driving well, but it was 'come on, you need to be careful'."

Few drivers would admit to thinking that. But make no mistake, any driver in that situation would be doing one of two things; either thinking exactly that, or burying that thought so far away from their consciousness that they were no longer thinking about it. That's the mental game at this level.

But what that run in 2013 tells us is that, with the right conditions, he can be just as prone to getting into a positive spiral as a negative one. And you can see that in the years since. After all, much of last season was good for Grosjean. Save perhaps Monza, where he binned it early in a wet qualifying session on the main straight, there weren't too many unusually big errors.

The key is whether Haas can harness him properly. When at Lotus, Eric Boullier was critical to Grosjean's success. This stretched right back to Grosjean being on the scrapheap after making himself very unpopular with what was then the Renault team when he had his first half-a-season in F1 after replacing Nelson Piquet Jr in 2009.

Grosjean had to turn to GT racing and prove himself worthy of getting back into the fold of Gravity Sports Management, part of the Genii Capital empire that would go on to own the Enstone team, then in the out-of-the-way Auto GP series before winning GP2 with DAMS to earn his second chance.

Haas faces a fine balancing act of supporting a driver whose confidence must be on the floor and giving him the focus and, if needed, the required kick to get things together

Boullier did not make it easy for him and demanded he must not just win the title but "be the boss" and dominated. Then, when in F1, he put a lot of work into getting Grosjean into the right mindset and giving him the kind of car characteristics needed to thrive.

It could be that this is the kind of environment Grosjean needs to get the best out of himself. In that respect, perhaps Haas - which he joined when it was a new team as lead driver - is the worst place for him? Maybe to be the Grosjean of late 2013 he needs a strong, established team to harness his prodigious ability?

Haas team principal Gunther Steiner has been publicly supportive of Grosjean, but history shows he's not afraid of putting him in his place. What the team faces now is a fine balancing act of supporting a driver whose confidence must be on the floor and giving him the focus and, if needed, the required kick to get things together.

There was a time when Grosjean looked like he had it in him to be a world championship-winning driver. The speed is still there, but given his age and experience it's long since been established as most likely that he's always going to be too erratic a performer.

F1's infuriating enigma is destined to remain so. If he wasn't things would have changed by now despite that tantalising glimpse of a driver over the second half of 2013 who had the speed and consistency to be right up there with the best of them.

There are days when Grosjean looks every bit worthy of a top drive, and there's as great a chance he will convert his downward spiral into an upward one with a great drive in Monaco as there is he'll make another big mistake. But there simply are not enough good days.

That's what makes him an unsolvable problem. He is capable of great things, and for a team lower down the grid there will always be the appeal of signing a driver capable of such incredible heights. But it seems that, alongside the peaks, you will also get the unavoidable troughs.