Romain Grosjean: F1's loss, DTM's gain?

When the curtain closed on the 2011 GP2 season, Romain Grosjean looked odds-on to land a drive in Formula 1 for next year. In a business that can often be about who you know, not what you know, he seemed to have the ear of the right people.

Renault F1 team boss Eric Boullier has been managing the Frenchman's career, a task he picked up in the wake of Grosjean's previous dalliance with the same team alongside Fernando Alonso in 2009. After initially farming him out to GT racing in 2010, to give as clear an indication as any of life without F1, Boullier had, it seemed, mapped out his protege's path back to the top of the sport. All Grosjean had to do was jump through the right hoops at the right time.

Yet less than a week after the F1 season had drawn to a close, and every hoop had seemingly been cleared, Grosjean was beginning to contemplate a life away from the highest level of the sport.

The news that he was testing a DTM car for BMW this week didn't look particularly startling at first. The German marque has tested an array of drivers since its 2012 test hack has been up and running, and at first glance it seemed little more than a chance for the Munich squad to give another top driver some seat time, and an opportunity for Grosjean to have a bit of fun.

But less than five minutes into his telephone conversation with AUTOSPORT on Monday, the eve of that test, he dropped the bombshell: "If [F1] doesn't happen this time, it would be time to think about something different."

Understandably, another question was slotted in to check this had meant what it sounded like. And he was emphatic.

As it turned out, it was Grosjean who initiated the contact with BMW, in what was yet another sign of his increased maturity. While he was prepared to put almost all of his eggs in the F1 basket by going back to GP2 for this year, he kept one back, and sent it BMW's way.

Grosjean was Renault's third driver in Abu Dhabi and Brazil... © sutton-images.com

Grosjean knows what the DTM is all about. He has raced (and won) on the German series' support bill in the past, taking the Formula 3 Euro Series title in 2007. And this year he has been commentating on the championship for French TV, meaning that he is fully up to speed with all the goings-on in a championship that is set to explode back into the big time next year with the return of BMW to take on Audi and Mercedes.

Trying to find a way in, should he need it, was a shrewd move. When BMW showed interest, Grosjean then alerted his management - Boullier's Gravity Sport scheme - to the discussions, and got the go-ahead to take up the offer of a test.

Still, after all he has achieved this year, it does seem a shame that the Frenchman even has to ponder a life away from single-seaters. After all, he did everything that was asked of him this year.

Phase one was to go back to GP2, where he would drive for the Boullier-affiliated DAMS squad. It wasn't the best team, but that was all part of the task: take a team that had not reached its potential in the first six years of GP2, and lead it to the top of the tree at this level for the first time since its Formula 3000 heyday in the early 1990s.

That leadership was key to Grosjean's chances of getting back to F1. Boullier knew the importance of that skill, for he had seen it first-hand with Robert Kubica at Renault, and had felt the effects of not having it when the Pole was ruled out of action in 2011.

"I told Romain that he had to be the boss in the garage, in the debriefs," says Boullier. "If you want to be able to do the job on track you have to be able to explain to your engineers what you want from the car.

"In my experience with Kubica I could see the importance of this. If you don't do it, you will never progress. I told Romain, 'If you drive for us, I want you to put the pressure where it has to be'. This is leading technically."

Throughout the season, it was clear in the GP2 paddock that Grosjean was taking his orders very seriously. A good result was almost an irrelevance to him if he felt that he'd achieved it either through luck, a clever strategy or just driving around his problems. He knew he had to deliver a good car for DAMS, and he took a particular interest in the fortunes of his struggling team-mate Pal Varhaug.

Grosjean is an improved driver since his few GP starts in 2009... © LAT

If the Norwegian qualified in the midfield rather than at the back, Grosjean took great pride from the fact that it meant he was bringing the car on. Boullier kept the pressure up, and his charge kept working towards his very precise goals all year.

So that was a big tick for phase one. Phase two was to return to the Renault F1 fold properly, with Friday free-practice outings in Abu Dhabi and Brazil. This meant climbing back into a contemporary F1 car on a grand prix weekend for the first time since 2009, and working with many of the same engineers and mechanics who'd not thought much of the cocky upstart drafted in to replace Nelson Piquet Jr mid-2009.

Grosjean has been very frank about his previous personality traits - he sometimes even refers to 'the old Romain of 2009' as if it were simply a different person. So with that in mind, he got back in a Renault cockpit, and delivered straight away. He was quick enough, and relatively error-free. But most telling was that members of the team confirmed what those who had been working with Grosjean all year had been saying: the boy had grown up.

"Now he fits very well into the team," says Boullier. "They are much happier with him than the 2009 experience - he knows a lot of them from then.

"To give you an example, a few mechanics grabbed me on Friday morning in Brazil and said, 'This is not the same Romain. Now we all talk to him!'"

The difference in Grosjean, even to work with as a journalist, is vast compared to when he was climbing the ladder to F1 the first time around. Back in his F3 and early GP2 days he could be perfectly pleasant, but he had an air of someone who always knew he was destined for bigger and better things. Understandably, it made him difficult to take to.

But that was no longer the case in 2011. The new Grosjean is a friendly, engaging and often jovial character who is prepared to make time for people. When AUTOSPORT needed a GP2 'champion' interview with him in the week of his F1 return in Abu Dhabi, Grosjean went far beyond the call of duty to ensure that we arranged a slot. Had we tried to do the same on the eve of his first stint at Renault, we would have been lucky if he'd even looked at his phone twice.

... but is embracing the possibility of a DTM drive with BMW if F1 does not want him

So everything was looking good. All that was left, surely, was phase three: being rewarded for his efforts by landing a drive in F1. The talk in the summer was that Grosjean would be placed at another team if a seat wasn't available at Renault.

Of course, last week Renault placed a Kimi Raikkonen-shaped spanner in any plans Grosjean or Boullier had for 2012 with its shock announcement of the Finn's return to the sport. How much Boullier had to do with that deal is up for discussion, but it has left Vitaly Petrov, Bruno Senna, Grosjean and other free agents all battling for one seat, with money likely to be a key factor in the decision.

So here we are, in early December, talking about the possibility of Grosjean going to DTM and not even looking over his shoulder for one more glance towards F1. All this talk of having to look elsewhere prompts one final question in our chat: was he not disappointed that all he'd done to rebuild himself had seemingly failed to yield more opportunities in F1? His answer was remarkable.

Without a hint of disappointment, Grosjean explained that he totally understands the way F1 funding has headed since the demise of the big-budget manufacturer era. He didn't have a problem with the fact that every time he sat down with a team they had to ask what sort of financial package he could bring.

He couldn't have sounded more genuine, and that, more than anything else he has done this season, is the mark of a man who has done a lot of growing up over the past two years.

If Grosjean does end up having to turn his back on F1 and instead races in the DTM in 2012, it will be one paddock's loss, and another's major gain.