Romain Grosjean says he was “never worried” that he would lose his Haas Formula 1 seat, in spite of a difficult start to his 2018 campaign.
Grosjean failed to score through the opening eight races, a run that included a series of high-profile incidents, including a late crash behind the Safety Car in Azerbaijan and triggering a first-lap pile-up in Spain.
Grosjean scored fourth place in Austria to get his season back on track though pointed to a changed mindset after the following event in Britain, in which he clashed with Haas team-mate Kevin Magnussen and Renault’s Carlos Sainz Jr., as influential in securing his future.
Haas confirmed in the build-up to the Russian Grand Prix last month that Grosjean and Magnussen would stay on for 2019.
“I don’t want this to sound wrong but I was never worried that I wouldn’t be here [at Haas] next year,” he said.
“At one point after Silverstone I knew it couldn’t keep going that way but I knew I had the solution somewhere and I knew I could bounce back.
“I thought Germany was the point, I was good and then I knew the team would see it and we would work it through.
“If I kept going as early on it wouldn’t have worked but from the point I knew exactly what I needed to do then I was convinced things would go in a positive way.
“I told my manager/partner before Germany, 'I am back. I know what was not going right and I am back where I should be'. Just in general since Germany I enjoy my time.”
When asked to explain the Silverstone incident that led to a resolution, Grosjean replied: “It was the race start when we touched with Kevin.
“It was trying to understand why we touched, why it wasn’t intentional from both sides and understanding why I or we [collided].
“I took the wrong decision with the braking point and so on. Not thinking at the time you’ve made the wrong decision, if that’s clear. It’s like the start in Japan in 2012 if you want a correlation.
“Thinking that you’re OK, OK, OK, and you’re not OK and why something that sounds like the right thing to do is the wrong thing to do.
“Again there’s two tenths of a second to take the decision and decide things.
“You need to be on the right side of that two tenths of a second and after Silverstone I knew I was on the wrong side and then I needed to understand why I was on the wrong start and I needed to just work on that.”
