Romain Grosjean is targeting a return to Formula 1 for the Abu Dhabi season finale in order to compete in his last race for Haas, according to Guenther Steiner.
Grosjean suffered minor burns in a violent accident at the start of the race in Bahrain on Sunday and has been ruled out of the upcoming second event in the country.
Haas reserve driver Pietro Fittipaldi will take his place for this weekend’s event.
Grosjean will remain in hospital until Wednesday in Bahrain but Steiner says the Frenchman, who will not race for the team in 2021, wants to return for a swansong.
“Romain would like to do it,” said Steiner. “I spoke to him yesterday about it. He wants to be in Abu Dhabi. I said try to get better, we speak on Sunday or Monday and if it’s doable.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Pietro is here, Romain is here. We just need to see how he feels. It depends on his health.
“He’s staying another night in the hospital, but it’s nothing to be preoccupied with. They just said it’s a safer environment I guess mostly because of the burns. They said we keep you here another night.
“But everything is going good. His guy, just talked with him, told me the doctors are happy with him and the healing process is as they would have seen it coming. No setback or nothing.”
Steiner said he and Grosjean had spoken about the accident, which measured 53G, and split the VF-20 in two.
“He remembers how he wanted to get out, or how he got out, he explained that very well to me,” said Steiner.
“What he asked me is ‘How did I end up there?’ and I said ‘You ran over [Daniil] Kvyat’s car, basically, you turned right and ran over his front wing, that turned you around and put you in the wall’.
“He said he didn’t see the car but I don’t want to put words in his mouth and say he doesn’t remember it, I think he doesn’t realise what he did. I wouldn’t say he lost any memory of it.
“The rest, I think it went so quickly he cannot remember it, you’ll have to ask him yourself to be honest what he remembers and what not.”
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