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Extra night for Grosjean in hospital, Steiner discusses potential Abu Dhabi return

Extra night for Grosjean in hospital, Steiner discusses potential Abu Dhabi return

01-12-2020 11:26 Last update: 12:22
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GPblog.com

According to his team boss Guenther Steiner, Romain Grosjean wants to return to the team for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The Frenchman is still in hospital for treatment for the burns he suffered this weekend during his horror crash in Bahrain.

In any case, Grosjean will miss this weekend's race on the outer ring of the circuit in Bahrain. Haas announced yesterday that Pietro Fittipaldi will replace him during that race weekend. But the goal of the Frenchman and his team is to have him racing again in just under two weeks. Grosjean will stay an extra day in hospital today.

"The goal is to get Romain to do it," Steiner says about the last race of the season against Motorsport.com. "I talked to him yesterday, he really wants to be there in Abu Dhabi. But I said 'Make sure you get better, then we'll talk about how you feel on Sunday or Monday and whether it's achievable'. But we will just look at that at the moment. Right now we have plenty of time. Pietro is here, Romain is here, we just have to see how he feels. I'm not in a hurry, it depends on his health".

No unforeseen problems

The team boss emphasises that his extra night in the hospital is not due to an unforeseen problem. "There's nothing to worry about. They just said it's a safer environment because of his burns. They just wanted to give him an extra night, but everything is going well in that area. The doctors are happy with how things are going and it is also going as they expected. I haven't spoken to him today, but yesterday he was mentally very strong, he is doing well. The person who is with him also says that he is very optimistic."

According to Steiner, his driver knows very little about what happened. "He remembers how he wanted to get out, and how he got out. He did ask me: 'How did I end up there?'. I told him that he had hit Kvyat and then went into the crash barriers. He told me that he hadn't seen Kvyat at all. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I think everything went too fast for him to know."