engulfed in flames<\/a> when he crashed through the barriers on the opening lap of the Bahrain Grand Prix in 2020, leaving him with extensive burns on both hands.<\/p>\nIt turned out to be his 179th and final Grand Prix, with the Frenchman going on to compete in the IndyCar series in America, taking six podiums and three poles over the course of four seasons.<\/p>\n
On Friday, he will return to a Formula 1 car following an invite from his former team Haas, with whom he spent five seasons competing between 2016 and 2020, when he drives the VF-23 in a Testing of Previous Car (TPC) test.<\/p>\n
Haas Team Principal Ayao Komatsu, who was Grosjean\u2019s race engineer when they worked together at Lotus, will once again serve as his race engineer at Mugello.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m absolutely thrilled to be welcoming Romain Grosjean back into a Formula 1 car for the first time in five years but especially proud he\u2019s returning in one of our cars \u2013 it\u2019s only fitting,\u201d said Komatsu.<\/p>\n
\u201cRomain and I have worked together throughout his entire Formula 1 career so this test at Mugello is of particular significance to us both.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m delighted he embraced the opportunity to come and get back behind the wheel with us, a day that\u2019s going to be made extra special by having so many members of the original crew back together to witness it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should be a fun day and knowing Romain as I do, I know he\u2019ll want to give it his all as usual \u2013 I\u2019d expect nothing less, not least as we\u2019ve talked about making this happen for a long time now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grosjean added: \u201cI\u2019m incredibly grateful to Gene Haas and to Ayao Komatsu for inviting me to participate in the TPC at Mugello.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo say I\u2019m excited to get back behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car would naturally be an understatement. I really can\u2019t believe it\u2019s been almost five years, but to come back and have this outing with my old team is truly something special.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited to see everyone, I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll spend a bit of time reminiscing about the old days, but I\u2019m also keen to be of use regarding the trackside agenda with the VF-23 \u2013 it\u2019s great the team now has the TPC program as part of its on-going development.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinally, my kids had designed my helmet for what was meant to be my final Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi back in 2020 \u2013 I\u2019m at last going to be able to give it a go in a Formula 1 car on Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ex-IndyCar driver and F1 TV<\/a> broadcaster James Hinchcliffe will get his first chance to drive a Formula 1 car on Friday when he drives the same VF-23 as part of a feature for F1 TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Romain Grosjean will drive a Formula 1 car for the first time since his dramatic crash in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-166963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}