Haas F1 planning to retain Romain Grosjean for 2017 - MotorSportsTalk

Haas Formula 1 chief Guenther Steiner plans to retain Romain Grosjean for the 2017 season following the Frenchman’s impressive debut campaign with the team.

NASCAR team co-owner Gene Haas took his eponymous F1 operation onto the grid for 2016, signing Grosjean from Lotus and former Sauber driver Esteban Gutierrez, who arrived after spending a year with Ferrari in a reserve role.

Grosjean has led Haas’ charge throughout its debut season, scoring all 28 of its points so far and recording a best finish of fifth in Bahrain.

Speaking in Friday’s FIA press conference, Steiner said that Grosjean had delivered all that was expected of him before confirming the team’s plans to stick with him for 2017.

“We got everything that we expected, what we hoped to get. He took us along very good,” Steiner said.

“He’s got quite a lot of points for a new team, he got them for us, so I think he delivered what he had to deliver.

“Our plans are to continue with him for next year, so I think we are pretty happy and we want to continue.”

Grosjean’s teammate Gutierrez has remained coy about his future, confirming that he will be racing in F1 next year but refusing to define where.

The Mexican driver is yet to score a point for Haas in F1, enduring a top-10 drought dating back to the 2013 Japanese Grand Prix.

Nevertheless, Steiner is pleased with Gutierrez’s efforts, saying in Friday’s FIA press conference that the Mexican has taken the brunt of Haas’ bad luck in 2016.

“I think it was a little bit of a rocky start for him and not only down to him. When we had an issue with the car it normally was with his car,” Steiner said.

“He had the accident in Australia with Alonso running into him. There seems very few times he had an ‘eventless’, if you can say, race weekend. I think he has developed and matured.

“Having been in F1 and then out of it for a year, I would say that makes it more difficult than coming in new, because he had been with Ferrari as their reserve or development driver, so he has seen a lot of stuff and then he comes in and has to race again.

“Also, the competition against Romain, which is not a bad driver, he’s good, and trying to do better than him is quite difficult, so maybe he put himself under a little bit too much pressure in the beginning.

“But all in all I think he’s doing a good job in the moment.”

Follow @LukeSmithF1

Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.

Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.

On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.

One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.

After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.

The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.

“It was good racing; it was fun,” Deegan said at about the 27-minute mark in the video above. “I just had some fun doing it.”

Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.

Lawrence defends Deegan — *Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports*

“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.

“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”

As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.

But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.

“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.

“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”

Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.

“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”

The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.

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