Romain Grosjean admitted he felt jealous of Pierre Gasly becoming the first French driver to win in Formula 1 for 24 years at the Italian Grand Prix last weekend.
Grosjean, now driving for Haas, came close to scoring victories for Lotus on several occasions in 2012 and 2013, leading races on seven occasions.Speaking in today’s press conference ahead of the Tuscan Grand Prix, Grosjean said he was “genuinely very happy for Pierre” following the AlphaTauri driver’s victory at Monza.
“Obviously also a bit jealous because I was close to the win three, four times and there weren’t any French wins for a long time. But genuinely very happy for Pierre, I think he deserves it and he did a mega job.”
Gasly’s breakthrough win was the first victory for a French driver since Olivier Panis won the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix for Ligier.
“Obviously, yes, it’s going to be a big thing in France and has been,” said Grosjean. “I’m hoping that the TV audience and the fans and so on they follow even more.
“But I think the big thing is to make the Formula 1 show happening [more] in general and we have more races like Monza.”
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BasCB (@bascb)
10th September 2020, 14:59
I can imagine he must feel happy for a nice young guy who went through a pretty tough year (he can surely relate to that in some aspects), feel proud of a fellow frenshman while at the same time regretting it wasn’t him to win when he was within a shot of a win.
Ben Needham (@ben-n)
10th September 2020, 15:12
A confusing overload of emotions I’m sure. It’s easy to forget that in the second half of 2013 he was the young, fast, French driver who looked like becoming the next race winner. Times change so quickly in Formula One and only the very best make it. Time will tell whether Gasly is the next Heikki Kovalainen or the next Sebastian Vettel. As for Grosjean, it’s great that he can be happy for his friend and countryman. It looks like he, Magnussen, Perez, Hulkenberg and several others might be fighting over 1 or 2 seats for 2021, you’d never have thought that in 2014.
Matthew Collier
10th September 2020, 18:41
Every Driver is jealous of Gasly including his team partner, you guys always title these articles to make Gro come off sounding like a jerk, the guy has been driving great this season and I wish some people would give him some credit.
kpcart
11th September 2020, 1:26
Come on Leclerc is French, no matter which way you spin it with the pretentious Monaco.
x303 (@x303)
11th September 2020, 19:22
Yeah, no he isn’t. It may sound strange from the outside but we never considered Leclerc has French and he never considered himself French either. All parties involved having sorted this issue, I’m sure you will understand our point of view.