Grosjean <\/a>suffered severe injuries in the 67G impact which split his Haas car in half and ruled him out of the final two races of the 2020 season, meaning he did not get the chance to wave a proper goodbye to F1.<\/p>\nMercedes planned for Grosjean to test one of their F1 cars in 2021 but COVID-19 restrictions forced it to be postponed.<\/p>\n
But the 39-year-old Frenchman finally got his opportunity thanks to his former team Haas.<\/p>\n
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Grosjean drove a 2023 VF-23 Haas on a wet Mugello track on Friday and admitted he was a bit \u201crusty\u201d as he got back up to speed.<\/p>\n
\u201cFive years after Bahrain, here we are at Mugello. Big thanks to MoneyGram Haas F1 Team, it was a special day,\u201d Grosjean reflected.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course team Haas, Ayao Komatsu, they made it happen. I drove the car. It was a wet day, it was a rainy, happy day. Just fantastic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt a bit rusty, just at first and then everything came back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grosjean greeted with emotional ovation<\/p>\n
Grosjean also completed a standing start – his first since the lights went out moments before his terrifying accident that shocked the F1 world five years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cI even got to do a standing start and guess what, my last standing start was Bahrain 2020, so this time it turned out way better,\u201d he exclaimed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very grateful for a very unique opportunity, getting to see some of the people from Australia 2016 and get to drive the new generation of cars.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was fantastic and again, I\u2019m very, very grateful. There are no other words.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grosjean revealed his Haas crew, as well as staff from Ferrari and Red Bull who were also in testing action, welcomed him with a standing ovation as he returned to the pits for the final time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt made me cry at the end of the day,\u201d he explained. \u201cI kept my visor down for my last in-lap, everyone from Ferrari, Red Bull, Pirelli and of course Haas was here clapping and giving me an ovation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was something I was expecting in Abu Dhabi 2020 but I think it was even better today.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Romain Grosjean has thanked Haas for organising his farewell F1 test at Mugello. The 10-time grand prix podium…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,817,5328,806,805,803,804,110154,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-171177","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-f1","11":"tag-haas","12":"tag-motor","13":"tag-motor-sports","14":"tag-motosport","15":"tag-motosports","16":"tag-romain-grosjean","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171177","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=171177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}