To a certain generation of Formula 1 viewers he’s the ‘man on fire’ in Bahrain 2020 or the hapless target of Haas team boss Guenther Steiner’s colourful invective. But he was also the only person to challenge a dominant Sebastian Vettel in the latter half of 2013, and briefly a potential championship contender…
WORDS OLEG KARPOV PORTRAITS ANDY HONE
THE LONG INTERVIEW
Those who worked with him will insist that Romain Grosjean had the speed to win races in F1. “On his day, he was as fast as anyone out there – nobody could drive better than him,” says his former engineer Ayao Komatsu, who worked with Grosjean throughout his entire F1 career and helped him achieve his 10 podiums. “But it’s just that not every day was his day.”
Many people probably won’t remember his career for those podiums – they were all achieved, as he puts it, in the “pre-Drive to Survive era”. For many ‘new’ F1 fans, he’s the guy who became a figure of fun after his opening-lap spin in Spain in 2017, or, most likely, the one who had that crash in Bahrain in 2020.
So the idea of talking to GP Racing about the other, pre-Netflix, part of his F1 journey is something he’s enthusiastic about as we sit down at the back of the Haas hospitality – with the blessing of Romain’s former boss Guenther Steiner – in the São Paulo Grand Prix paddock, where he’s working as a sort of colleague of ours in a role as a commentator for French broadcaster Canal+.
GP Racing: Romain, there’s a video on YouTube which has about 2,500 views where you tell a story about meeting Flavio Briatore in a wet racesuit. Maybe it’s time to share it with a wider audience...
Romain Grosjean: Ha ha! Are we sure about that? It was a bit embarrassing... It was Silverstone, 2008, GP2 race two, a very wet race. And it was one of the five times, I think, in my whole career where I had no choice but to release the pressure from my bladder during the race. And then I was called into Flavio’s office right after it finished... Luckily it rained a lot that day. So I don’t think he noticed!
GPR: How was it for you to work with Flavio?
RG: It was always good. He was very nice to me. I didn’t get the chance to do much with him in F1. I knew him mostly from my junior career and he’s a character for sure. But when I came to F1 in 2009, it was three races – and that was it.
GPR: This was the fall-out from ‘Crash-gate’ [Briatore received a ‘lifetime’ ban from motor racing when his role in fixing the 2008 Singapore G
