Romain Grosjean

Was drafted into F1 with not an ounce of testing and replaced Nelson Piquet Jr in the middle of 2009 when he was possibly on route to becoming the GP2 Champion that season, which went to Nico Hulkenburg.

In his 7 races in F1 he failed to impress and the no in-season testing rule didn't help his course. Plus having Fernando Alonso as his teammate couldn't have helped either.

In 2010 Grosjean went to do Auto GP, before returning back to GP2 on July 20th for a few guess appearances for DAM'S. But in 2011 Grosjean was given a full-time drive by DAM'S for the 2011 GP2 series and went on to become the 2011 GP2 Champion.

My question is will Grosjean get a drive for 2012? Plus how far can this guy go if he gets into F1?

 

[Fenderman]

Unfortunately he has kept his nose clean by being careful and slow in traffic and race conditions. His Monaco weekend has exposed the fact that that is not good enough. It wasn't a blip. Although undiagnosed at the time his issues were apparent in his GP2 career. One expects experience to dial out a propensity to crash and generally that is so if the mistakes are due to exuberance or carelessness. I don't think Romain is overly exuberant or careless and on a good day he is a fast and capable driver. However, I am now certain that he has the deficits I described above. They are very common and with close observation fairly easy to recognise. As I inferred in my earlier analysis that is not a slight on him as an individual and my comments should not be taken as such.

 

[teabagyokel]

Fenderman - As someone who, I believe, suffers from a similar problem, I have to say I totally and utterly agree with you. It is a great pity, because everything else seems to be there.

I believe, considering this, Monza was a complete waste of time. Why did the race ban go to he, rather than the drivers who seemed to crash in a more reckless way. Anyway, that's a discussion for another day.

I just don't see a way back for Grosjean now.

 

[Johnny Carwash]

Think it's time for Grosjean to go back and see his psychologist before the Canadian GP.

 

[no-FIAt-please]

Anyone remeber Grosjean's 2nd place at Montreal last year? Don't count him out yet.

 

[no-FIAt-please]

Honourable mention to Romain Grosjean. Looked like he had the speed we saw last year. He could have, and should have won the German GP but for the safety car.

 

[RasputinLives]

Poor old RoGro. To quote Brundle 'he's super quick when he's not running into things'

I don't think anyone has any doubts he has the pace to be a front runner and maybe more but his confidence is just completely gone from all his accidents. This season he's been trying so hard to be cautious to change his rep that he's just lost his pace all together. Sunday just shows if he gets off the grid well and gets in free air he can mix it with anyone. I have no doubt if he landed a pole he'd storm off lights tobflag. More tonF1 than that though.

I've always backed him and still rate him but I'm not sure how he goes about sorting himself and think he might be out by end if the year unless he keeps up Sunday form.

 

[Jos the Boss]

I remember when he qualified in third in Oz 2012, I thought he was gonna be up there potentially for the Championship, but in typical RoGro fashion, his hopes just crashed and burned as the season went on

 

[Incubus]

One of the most frequent things being put forward to explain his first-lap incidents is an alleged lack of spatial awareness. It's quite a broad term though because there are many possible causes for it, including minor colour-blindeness, since the two afflictions are caused by the same gene. I don't know the details of physical examinations FIA drivers need to undergo but it's quite likely a certain amount of mild colour-blindedness could go undetected. Something that would not even be noticeable on a day-to-day basis but might cause the most minute, barely perceptible shortage of spatial awareness that becomes critical in a Grand Prix first lap situation.

 

[Il_leone]

RasputinLives

JYS was prepared to mentor him and RoGro said no thankyou. When you've got an F1 legend who recognises your skill and want s to help you harness I think some words of wisdom would come in handy

Still he has to show he is not a flash in the pan and need to string results more consistently.

i don't know if becoming a dad the old baby blues may explain a loss of form usually but I hope he is not dumped out of F1

I remember Vettel was quite accident and error prone but people seem to forget about those days since his record breaking achievements from 2010

there is still hope for RoGro... I hope his career won;t be remembered for his crashes and the fact he was the bait Flavio used to undermine Piquet Jr

 

[Fenderman]

Depth perception is certainly one aspect of spatial awareness and any difficulty in differentiating between colours, or shades foe of colour, will not help, spatial awareness is a lot more complicated and will not be down to a single gene.

In my post here...
http://cliptheapex.com/threads/romain-grosjean.3737/page-15#post-200180
... I go to great lengths to explain spatial awareness in the context of driving a car. I believe modern physical examinations of F1 drivers are on a par with those of pilots and astronauts. However, spatial awareness requires a host of other faculties so even 20/20 vision with perfect colour balance won't rule out a deficit.

I've long been convinced that none of his crashes were due to over aggressive behaviour or outright carelessness. Maybe his Spa faux pas was rather exuberant but there's no malice in the man (unlike others I may pillory).

If, perchance, Romain's issue is one that can be trained out of him, all well and good. If it cannot, then I doubt his ability to sustain a top level of performance in F1 even if the car is truly competitive. That is a shame because he's a nice bloke and it would be nice to see him make it in the sport.

 

[cider_and_toast]

Was it just me or did anyone else see nothing massively wrong in Grosjean's overtake on Button? When watched from above it looked to me that Grosjean had the overtake and it was Button who was trying to squash Grosjean.

Ok, it was a bit harsh given what we've seen before but it was good to see some one finally get done for not keeping it on the track but as for the other incident, I fear it's more down to the perception of the driver and not the issue of the overtake.

 

[Hamberg]

Completely agree CaT. Anyone else and that would have been a racing incident.

 

[F1Yorkshire]

I saw that angle too and was shot down in chat about it. Anyone have a clip? The views from the front looked pretty cut and dry though in Buttons favour.

 

[no-FIAt-please]

Here are Grosjean incidents today.

Personally I thought the incident with Button was a little careless, no intent and the Frenchman shouldn't have recieved a penalty for it. Racing incident.

As for his overtake on Massa, I thought it was excellent. He was already past by the time he was out of the white lines, not to mention as seen in the video above if he didn't move then in all likelyhood there would have been a collision.

A bit of Grosjean prejudice going on today I think.

 

[sushifiesta]

Reputations are hard to shake off.

 

[gethinceri]

I think he was penalised for overtaking Massa while off the circuit, had he given the place back he would've been better off. On Button he bit off more than he was prepared to chew as JB didn't cede, that was a poor decision given who he was trying to pass, Jenson has nothing to lose. Goes to my view of Grosjean not being good enough, yet.

 

[Fenderman]

Button gave Grosjean plenty of room to complete the job. So much so that he had two wheels on the grass trying to avoid contact. Romain demonstrated again that he is not innately or intuitively aware of the space that he and his car occupy.

He has clearly been working extremely hard to counter his spacial awareness deficit by very consciously looking about him and using his mirrors. Unfortunately, to be top flight, he somehow needs to convert that into an automatic subconscious awareness of his space and the racing environment. I'm not sure that that is actually possible for anyone in his position to achieve.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Some may argue the penalty for overtaking outside of the track parameters was harsh but thems the rules, you do it you and get seen doing it then the drive through is what you get, on balance his move on JB should have been punished with a drive through and if it had have been the second incident would not have happened the belated 20 second penalty given to Romain Crashjean cost him nothing....

At the end of the day justice was done...

 

[KekeTheKing]

It always seems to me whenever Grosjean gets in position for a huge result he always botches it in one way or another. I do believe the drive-thru was harsh today however.

I also think its fairly clear that RoGro will never be a top flight driver. He's had more than enough time to prove it with a monumental drive and he never has.

 

[Fenderman]

... and just to be clear I do not blame RoGro for his condition. Humans are different in many ways and the acute spatial awareness demonstrated by many of the best racing drivers, fighter pilots and the like is probably the exception not the rule. Most of us are probably quite average.