“He needs to stay home”- Haas withdraws its sponsorship from Romain Grosjean’s IndyCar campaign; he doesn’t want him to kill himself.
Gene Haas, the owner of the Formula 1 team Haas was set to sponsor Romain Grosjean in his IndyCar endeavour before the French race driver met with a crash during the Bahrain Grand Prix.
According to Haas, he pulled out the sponsorship because he wants his former employee to be at home and be his family and not rush back to motorsport.
“He had asked if we would be willing to sponsor him in IndyCar, and I think at the beginning I was pretty open to it,” Haas told RACER. “But then when he crashed in Bahrain, I was just so happy he didn’t kill himself.
“For someone who has just absolutely destroyed the car, I couldn’t be happier that he survived it. I don’t know… he has a wife and three kids, and I just told him I couldn’t see giving him money to go out and kill himself.”
“I just felt like he needs to stay home and take care of his family. He escaped the big one there. If you really understood what happened there.”
“If that car had been a few degrees one way or the other, he wouldn’t have been able to get out through that hoop, and he would have died. So, extremely lucky.”
“And the team was fortunate. I could not fathom having to face a widow or his kids. I couldn’t do that. So I said, ‘Nah, stay home, I can’t help you there anymore’.”
I don’t want to be a part of the wrong choice.
Haas showed no surprise over Grosjean still moving on with his IndyCar move as the 34-year-old made a deal with Dale Coyne Racing and commented that he doesn’t want to be a part of a wrong decision made.
“You know, Grosjean’s a heck of a driver,” Haas said. “He has some excellent days when I think he’s probably as good as any driver out there. He loves driving, and that’s his choice.”
“I don’t want to be part of the bad choice. I feel as lucky as he is to escape being killed. That was the luckiest day in the whole Haas F1 saga that Grosjean managed to survive that, and relatively unscathed.”
“It wasn’t so terrifying in the fact that he jumped out, but the hoop was stuck between the guardrails. If that hoop were a little bit smaller, then his helmet wouldn’t have fit through it, and he would have died.”
“He came very close. So I’m pleased. That was probably the happiest day in racing, was to see him jump out of that car.”
