Plotting Romain Grosjean's F1 Future After Nightmare 2014 Season at Lotus
Romain Grosjean has won everywhere he has raced: Formula Renault, Formula Three, GP2, the GT1 sports car series. Everywhere, that is, except Formula One.
After a strong finish to the 2013 season (four podiums in the last six races), Grosjean seemed a lock to take his first victory this year. He even became the de facto team leader at Lotus when Kimi Raikkonen moved to Ferrari.
But the Lotus E22 is, quite simply, not a good race car. Grosjean has managed just two eighth-place finishes this season and has not finished higher than 12th since Monaco. Those poor results have led to him openly discussing whether his F1 future is with Lotus—a team that has shown remarkable faith in him, even when his driving ability was called into question.
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Grosjean is living at least the third of his nine F1 lives right now. Back in 2009, he was in his second year as a test driver for Renault, while also competing in GP2. When Nelson Piquet, Jr. was axed midseason, Grosjean was prematurely promoted to the Brazilian's seat.
Predictably, Grosjean struggled, particularly in comparison to his world champion team-mate, Fernando Alonso. In seven races, Grosjean never finished higher than 13th, while Alonso snagged third place in Singapore.
At the end of the season, Alonso moved to Ferrari, replaced by Robert Kubica, while Vitaly Petrov took Grosjean's seat. Without an F1 drive, Grosjean returned to GP2 and also took up sports car racing, competing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
He was given a second chance in 2011 when his former team, now called Lotus (with Renault supplying the engines), brought him back as a test driver. Meanwhile, he won the GP2 championship over a number of familiar names, including Jules Bianchi, Esteban Gutierrez, Marcus Ericsson and Max Chilton.
That performance helped convince the team to promote him back into a race seat along the newly signed Raikkonen in 2012. Although he collected three podium finishes, Grosjean also caused a number of first-lap accidents, including a big one at Spa that led to a one-race ban. Still, the team gave him another chance in 2013.
He started seeing a sports psychiatrist, who he credited with helping him calm down and increase his self-confidence, per ESPN F1. The aforementioned strong results followed, but 2014 has been a disappointment.
So where does Grosjean go from here?
Some of his ties to Lotus are disappearing. First, his former team principal and manager Eric Boullier left for McLaren. Now, the team is switching from Renault engines to Mercedes. Renault, a French company, has supported the Swiss-French Grosjean since the earliest days of his single-seater career, a decade ago.
According to James Galloway of Sky Sports, McLaren have been rumoured as a possible landing spot for Grosjean, where he could rejoin Boullier.
In the same article, Grosjean was quoted as saying:
"What I really want now is to win my first grand prix of course—and why not trying to become World Champion?
... I miss fighting for podiums and I miss drinking the champagne on Sunday afternoon. That’s what I want—that’s what all of us want. When you taste it once you don’t not want to taste it for a long time.
"
McLaren, though, seem to be making a strong push to sign an established star for 2015—Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel have both been mentioned as possibilities by Autosport's Jonathan Noble, among others.
It is conceivable that McLaren could replace both their current drivers, but it is not clear that Grosjean would be a big step up over Jenson Button or Kevin Magnussen.
If either Alonso or Vettel does move to McLaren, one of their seats would become available, but it is unlikely Grosjean would be in contention for it. Red Bull like to promote from within, and Daniil Kvyat has shown well in his first season with their sister team, Toro Rosso.
Ferrari, meanwhile, have Jules Bianchi waiting in the wings and also have links to Nico Hulkenberg.
Mercedes and Williams seem happy with their driver pairings, and there are no other teams that would be seen as a step up from Lotus.
Force India has been better than Lotus this season—and a spot could become available there if Hulkenberg were to move up the grid—but there is no guarantee they will still be ahead of Lotus next year, with both teams running the same power unit.
So it seems that another season at Lotus is the most likely scenario for Grosjean right now—and that may not be a bad thing. If the team can improve with their switch to Mercedes engines and Grosjean can return to his form from the end of 2013, he could be bargaining from a position of strength next year.
However, he will also be 29 by the end of next season—not exactly young in an era where a 16-year-old can be signed to a race seat.
While Grosjean's future path does not look nearly as straight as it did 12 months ago, the F1 driver market is an ever-shifting landscape. Perhaps his opportunity in a top-flight car will come as early as next season, or perhaps it will take longer.
It remains to be seen whether Lotus' struggles this year are a one-year blip or a new, downward trend (if he does indeed remain at Lotus).
"You tend to always think that the grass of the neighbour is greener than yours," Grosjean said, according to Galloway's Sky Sports article. “Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not, so every time you change something there’s a risk."
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