The Haas-Ferrari relationship has been talked about a lot in the past few days after Haas put up a stellar performance during qualifying, separating itself from the midfield and qualifying ahead of the Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo.
And while the Haas camp would have rejoiced after their qualifying show, the team suffered a massive anti-climax during race day with both Magnussen and Grosjean having to retire due to two identically poor pit stops.
When you’re down, people tend to put you down further and thus a lot of rival F1 teams have come out and questioned Haas’ ‘over the top’ performance during qualifying in Australia, with Force India labelling it as ‘magic’.
A lot of the midfield teams have asked for investigation into the Ferrari-Haas relationship as they feel that their relationship goes beyond just ‘power unit supply’.
Grosjean though feels that questioning the credibility of Haas’ expertise and skill level through baseless arguments about that apparent Haas-Ferrari cartel is a little demeaning to the American team.
“It’s the same thing every time we are fast and it was the same thing last year,” Grosjean said.
“We were Ferrari B. We are using the same engine, same gearbox, same suspension, everyone knows the suspension is providing a lot of the flow, so of course there’s going to be similarities.
“But we are building our own car. It’s not nice for the people that work hard and produce the Haas F1 VF-18.” he added.
Grosjean then went onto say that the Haas-Ferrari relationship was actually good for the sport and that everything was being carried out within the laws of the sport.
“I think the way we operate the team and the way we’ve created a partnership with Ferrari, it’s good for F1,” he said.
“It shows that you can come and make things look pretty good in a short amount of time.
“Of course, if we had to do everything from zero we wouldn’t be where we are today. We’ve got the parts from Ferrari which is very important for us, so I think it’s a good thing for F1 to show that if you want to come to F1, there’s a way to do it that you can be successful early on.” he concluded.
