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That\u2019s only possible because Haas has started a Testing of Previous Cars programme in 2025 in partnership with technical partner Toyota<\/a> Gazoo Racing. It’s given Super Formula champions Ritomo Miyata and Sho Tsuboi their F1 test debuts – and even team owner Gene Haas and team boss Ayao Komatsu<\/a> got behind the wheel of an F1 car for the first time at Goodwood.<\/p>\n It was Grosjean’s turn when he drove the Haas VF-23 at a rain-soaked Mugello circuit on Friday.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a special day. Gene Haas and Ayao Komatsu made it happen,\u201d Grosjean, who drove for Haas from 2016 to 2020, said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a wet day [but] fantastic. I felt a bit rusty at first, then everything came back.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI even got to do a standing start and my last standing start was Bahrain 2020, so this time it turned out way better.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c[I\u2019m] very grateful, a unique opportunity, to see some of the people that were in Australia 2016, and get to drive the new generation of car. It was fantastic. I\u2019m very grateful, there are no other words.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the wet conditions, The Race understands Grosjean was still able to get decent mileage aboard the Haas.<\/p>\n And the conditions improved by the time IndyCar race winner turned F1 TV pundit James Hinchcliffe made his F1 test debut, who was able to bolt on slicks for his final run – “an incredible machine, a day I’ll remember for a long time”. <\/p>\n A more fitting farewell\u00a0<\/p>\n Many of Grosjean\u2019s original Haas crew were involved in the team with now-team boss Komatsu serving as Grosjean\u2019s race engineer for the day, a partnership the duo started at Lotus Renault in the early 2010s.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur also paid a visit to the garage. He was present for the second day of Ferrari\u2019s Pirelli tyre test at Mugello with the team\u2019s reserve driver Zhou Guanyu driving alongside Charles Leclerc.<\/p>\n Ferrari and Pirelli helped Haas give Grosjean\u2019s day a fittingly warm end.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey made me cry at the end of the day, I kept my visor down but for my last out-lap, everyone from Ferrari, Pirelli, Haas was here, clapping and giving me an ovation,\u201d Grosjean said.<\/p>\n \u201cSomething I was expecting in Abu Dhabi 2020, but it was even better today.\u201d<\/p>\n You can certainly argue for or against Grosjean deserving longer in F1 than he got, but it\u2019s undeniable that his F1 venture deserved better than being ruled out of the final two races with injury.<\/p>\n Thankfully, Haas has corrected the injustice in a small way that clearly means an awful lot to its first F1 driver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Romain Grosjean has successfully completed his first Formula 1 test since his fireball crash at the 2020 Bahrain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-170915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GRO-1-548.jpeg\")
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