Despite leaving the Haas F1 team at the end of the 2020 Formula 1 World Championship, Romain Grosjean will team up with the team again, this time in F1 Esports.
The French driver left F1 in a shocking crash after four years at Haas. On the first lap of the Bahrain Grand Prix, his car left the track after contact with Daniil Kvyat’s AlphaTauri and crashed into a guardrail at nearly 120 mph.
His Haas VF20 was split in half by the 67G impact, with the front portion piercing the barrier and the Halo device deflecting the metal from Grosjean’s head. After surviving, he spent almost half a minute in a fireball before escaping from his car and with the help of Dr. Ian Roberts brought to safety.
Grosjean has now switched to racing at IndyCar this season and actually made his debut in the series last week. Before that, however, he had formed his own esports team called R8G Esports, and this is how he continues his partnership with Haas.
Uralkali Haas F1 Team Esports 
@ r8gesports
Heeeeres Romain! # HaasF1 pic.twitter.com/J8IOCxdNrv
– Haas F1 Team (@ HaasF1Team) March 24, 2021
R8G Esports will directly manage Haas F1’s 2021 F1 Esports Pro Series campaign launched later this year. That means the Haas team’s 2020 driver line-up – Cedric Thome and Simon Weigang – is unlikely to be retained as they are likely to be replaced by R8G’s own team of nearly 20 drivers.
It’s also a practical set-up. The R8G squad includes the finalists of the GT Sport World Tour, Baptiste Beauvois and Randall Haywood, as well as the multidisciplinary champion and current leader in Formula E acceleration points, Erhan Jajovski. There is also F1 Esports experience in Thomas Scibilia, and of course Grosjean himself is part of the roster. Like all other teams, Haas will have to select a wildcard driver from the 2021 Pro Draft later this year in addition to his selected driver line-up.
Günther Steiner, Team Principal at Haas F1, commented:
“I am delighted that we can use Romain’s enthusiasm for the sport and the expertise of R8G Esports to monitor our continued participation in the F1 Esports Pro Series. This is an important step for us in terms of our commitment from previous seasons. We know we’re working with a group that really understands the needs of the sports environment and can help take our program to the next level.
“We scored some memorable points in the past F1 Esports Pro series and we won this season’s Virtual Grand Prix series. It would be fantastic to keep that shape under the guidance of R8G Esports in the F1 Esports Pro Series this season. “
