“Kimi is winning and I'm barely finishing 10th in Australia and China, really suffering, like miles away. “We had a KERS mapping issue for the first few races, just on my car,” says Grosjean. Lotus retained faith in Grosjean for 2013 but the season started badly. And it's just hard.” Coming close to wins And every time you try to get out, it's pushing you back in. It's just like being in a wave or washing machine and trying to get out of it. You get into a situation which is almost impossible to get out of. “Then you go into that bad spiral where you have to perform, but you have so much pressure to perform and you're not allowed to make a mistake. I remember texting Fernando, ‘Sorry, I'm glad you're okay.’ His answer was: ‘The penalty is too harsh, you will bounce back.’ Then on the other hand, it was not nice to have Mark coming in, I mean, we all make mistakes and he's done some. “I'm not proud of it, but it's part of it. “Spa was a mistake, I accept the penalty, but I think the penalty was far too harsh,” Grosjean says. Webber called Grosjean a ‘first-lap nutcase.’ Upon his return he didn’t take another top six finish, and had another nightmarish moment at Suzuka, tipping Mark Webber into a spin. Grosjean was banned for one round after causing a spectacular first-turn accident at the Belgian Grand Prix. Then things went south because I tried to win so much instead of sometimes accepting that fourth, fifth, second, third was good enough. “It was almost too fast,” says Grosjean of his results. LIGHTS TO FLAG: Jaime Alguersuari on his teenage F1 debut, life as a Red Bull junior and swapping motorsport for music Grosjean was in contention for victory in Valencia but the alternator failed. Then we go to Canada, we finished second, then Valencia.” “We go to Spain, I have the fastest lap and P4, then we go to Monaco, I was very fast, but met Michael at the start. “People forgot by then I'm a rookie,” he says. Lotus delivered a quick car in 2012 and Grosjean was rapid from the outset, qualifying third in Australia, before scoring a maiden podium in Bahrain. And the same day I got the phone call – actually at the airport in the south of Spain – from Eric saying, okay, you got the seat.” I had a test with them in Spain, and the test went amazingly well, and he wanted to hire me. On December 8, Grosjean’s phone was buzzing. “I went back on the radar at that point,” Grosjean says. He then returned to Renault as a test driver. Grosjean was hired by GT1 World Championship team Matech, then mid-2010 returned to GP2 with DAMS, before being re-hired by Genii Capital, through its Gravity Sport Management scheme. LIGHTS TO FLAG: Rubens Barrichello on Schumacher, Ferrari, the Brawn adventure – and his racing exploits after F1 I tried, but there was no real room and there was no real opportunity.” “I took my backpack from my apartment in Geneva, jumped on the train, went to Paris where my girlfriend, now wife, lived, and never went back to the apartment! I went to do an open house for a cooking school. “It was January 31, 2010,” Grosjean says in a flash. It looked like Grosjean’s F1 career was over before it had even really got going – and he pondered a big career change away from racing altogether. Renault sold a majority stake in the team to Genii Capital and Grosjean was replaced by Vitaly Petrov. Sadly I was part of the furniture that the new owner kind of removed when they bought the house!” Exile, podiums and prangs “And the deal was like seven races to prepare 2010. “I made a couple of mistakes, but I don't think I did too badly,” Grosjean reflects now, some 14 years on. Grosjean had Fernando Alonso as his teammate, the R29 was towards the rear of the mid-pack, and off-track Renault were facing a crisis over the Crashgate scandal. And I'm thrown straight into a city racetrack to start Formula 1!” We had no simulator, I had never sat in the car, I didn't even do an aero test on that car. “Then the next day I got a call, ‘we're giving Nelson the last chance.’ So you're like, ‘yeah, I'm going to get in, ah, I'm not going to get in.’ Then I got the call that I'm going to be in the car in Valencia. “I got a phone call post German GP: ‘you’re in the car for Budapest,’ which was the week after,” he says. Renault junior Grosjean won the 2007 Formula 3 title, the 2008 GP2 Asia title, and was a front-runner in the main GP2 Series in 2009 when the Renault F1 team rang. “When I started winning in GP2, I was thinking there’s a chance I can make it.” ![]() “I was just doing it for fun – I had no idea if I would make it,” says Grosjean. ![]() PODCAST: Romain Grosjean on criticism, psychology and his racing future
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