Formula 1 and Canal+ pundit Romain Grosjean has apologised to McLaren and team principal Zak Brown after misquoting him during the Spanish Grand Prix weekend in Madrid.
Speaking during Sunday’s race coverage, Grosjean criticised remarks he believed Brown had made after qualifying. He initially claimed Brown’s comments had damaged Oscar Piastri’s morale and suggested McLaren had treated its drivers unfairly.
“I saw a statement from Zak Brown about Lando Norris’ lap. He cut Oscar Piastri to pieces with a pair of scissors and a chainsaw right there,” Grosjean said after Norris secured pole position. “If Piastri had any morale left, he doesn’t have any anymore.”
“The harshness and violence of that statement shocked me,” he added. “The question was how Norris had explained the qualifying gap. He basically said that Lando is a world champion and that he was better than Oscar.”
“He kind of forgot that last year Oscar was leading the world championship, that at Monza they asked him to let Lando past and that perhaps wasn’t necessarily the thing to do at that point. It was surprising, very surprising, and it left me speechless when I heard that statement.”
However, Brown had not made those remarks. Grosjean had misunderstood the McLaren team principal’s post-qualifying interview on F1 TV, which was conducted in the presence of Juan Pablo Montoya, Jolyon Palmer and Grosjean himself.
Zak Brown praised his driver’s qualifying result
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
Brown had instead said: “The whole lap was amazing, and Lando’s just getting better and better and better. When you see a lap like that put down, you just go, ‘he’s a world champion.’”
Asked by Montoya about the performance gap between his drivers, Brown continued: “I think a) you got Lando on his A-plus game, right? So, I don’t think there was anything left laptime-wise there. So, he found that.
“Oscar’s been right there with him all weekend and just didn’t get that same extra lap. We’ll continue to look at it. He’ll look at the data and probably do what we all did and go, ‘wow, what a lap’ as well.”
Grosjean’s remarks during Canal+’s live race broadcast drew widespread attention and sparked extensive discussion on social media.
On Sunday evening, he issued an apology and clarified that he had misunderstood Brown’s words.
“Today, I made a comment on Canal+ regarding Zak Brown’s comments about Oscar Piastri during an interview yesterday on F1 TV, which I was part of,” he wrote.
“I completely misunderstood his words and want to apologise for that. I know how important it is to Zak and the entire McLaren team to respect their drivers and treat them fairly and equally.”
“McLaren had the fastest car today and were unlucky with the VSC. I’m sure both Lando and Oscar will have another chance to fight for the win in Baku.”
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