Haas Driver Romain Grosjean Left Frustrated With F1’s Inclusion of Sakhir Grand Prix

A week ago, F1 officially confirmed that there would be three more races added to the 2020 season. It will feature a double-header in Bahrain followed by a race in Turkey. The season will then draw to a close in Abu Dhabi. Fans were pleased to see a 17 race calendar in a truncated season. But the idea for the Bahrain double-header divided opinions. The main point of contention being, for the second race in Bahrain, a totally different track layout will be used. This layout, known as the oval circuit, is much shorter (3.5 km) than the usual Grand Prix track (5.4 ). The limited space coupled with the fact that it’s a circuit that demands high power makes it dangerous, according to Haas driver Romain Grosjean.

Grosjean said (translated by Google), “I don’t want to be too quick to judge. I think it’s good to try things out. But we did the math: If every car is to have the same amount of space on the track, then there are only 175 meters for each individual.”

The Frenchman thinks that it could lead to some serious chaos during qualifying as well as in the race. From his point of view, if a car is running in last and they get lapped by the Mercedes first and then the rest of the grid, by the time they let the last car through, the lead Mercedes would be back on their tail for another lapping.

Romain Grosjean reveals his alternate idea

Instead of using the shorter track for the second (night) race in Bahrain, Grosjean said, “I would have preferred to have done the second race on the normal track. But during the day, at two in the afternoon, when it is really warm.”

That, as per Grosjean, would throw in the challenge of battling the heat. As for the first race, he’d rather have that scheduled at night. Grosjean said, “I’ll talk to Alex (Wurz) and Sebastian (Vettel) during the week. So that we from the driver’s union can talk about making a proposal that we can then discuss with Formula 1.”

If Grosjean’s views are shared by the other drivers in the paddock, F1 may well have to change its plans.