Grosjean almost quit racing for a strange obsession

Haas driver, Romain Grosjean, wrote a heart-felt article which was published on the Players’ Tribune today, revealing a few details of his debut season in F1 and how he dealt with being dropped by Renault after the 2009 season for Vitaly Petrov.

But the biggest revelation from Grosjean was the fact that he was affected so much by the call from then Renault principal, Eric Boullier, that he made up his mind to go to Paris and enroll in a cooking school because he loved cooking. So much so that he wanted to take it up as an alternate career.

“I grew up loving food. I watched my mom cook great meals in our family home. I can still remember the smells of the cheeses in our kitchen, the tastes of the chocolate for dessert. And also, chocolate is my religion. Put that on a T-shirt,” wrote Grosjean.

“I always loved cooking, and I knew a thing or two about fine dining, so, yeah, Romain the chef. That’ll do.” But why did he not take it up then? Well, he was told by the school that he was too old to take up cooking!

“I did actually go to cooking school in Paris. Like I physically went to the building. But they didn’t even let me sign up. Can you believe that? I was told I was too old. Too old! I was 24! So that was that. No cooking,” Grosjean wrote.

Grosjean also spoke about the infamous pile-up at Spa in 2012, one which earned him a race ban, and said that he started seeing a sports psychologist a few months before it happened, which helped him deal with the incident and also other events in his life.

The Frenchman has 10 podiums in F1, all from his time at Lotus, but has ambitions to win a race someday with Haas and he certainly has the resolve to do so as evidenced by his brilliant comeback in the latter half of the season after some rookie errors in the first few races.