Romain Grosjean saw the funny side as a spin brought his day of testing to an early end on Thursday.
The Frenchman lost the rear through the long Turn 4 during a long run and slid into the gravel, giving the barrier a small nudge.
He was able to recover back to the pits but the rear wing was damaged, meaning he was unable to run again.
“I spun, it had to be me that spun!” he told FormulaSpy in the paddock. “I don’t think I’ll be the only one. I’m not the first one, but there just wasn’t enough space there.
Grosjean spins at Turn 4 and bumps the barriers#F1Testing pic.twitter.com/QQfsELDM89
— Formula 1 (@F1) February 20, 2020
“The temperature dropped at the end of the day and the tyres went out of the window.
“We had planned another 20 laps, some 180 in total – with two days taken away from eight last year, that’s a big chunk to lose and we’re trying to do as much as we can.”
Still, 163 laps is still a huge amount of running for a single day, just a lap or two shy of two and a half race distances around the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
But every lap is crucial for Haas as they try to avoid a repeat of last year’s problems which saw them struggle for much of the season.
“You can train your neck as much as you want at home, but your neck is always going to go at some point,” Grosjean said.
“I feel OK in the car and the stint I was on was actually going very well. I just lost the temperature in the tyres.
“We went through a lot of the program, tried as many things as we could in one day and there’s more to try tomorrow.
“We’re not looking to make the car over one lap or setting it up, we’re just testing every single option and see what they do, and work on the correlation issues we had last year and make sure we’re in line and happy with that.”
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TV cameras caught Haas boss Guenther Steiner pull a face of anguish when Grosjean found the barrier but despite the small setback, he remains positive.
“We wanted to do the whole days distance but think we were about 20 laps short,” he said.
“Romain was pretty clear that the tyres just slipped and the lap before he did the same. The lap before we looked at the data and it just snapped.
“He said it was spinning and going back on the track he hit something but the damage is not big. Surely the rear wing is damaged but nothing else, the suspension is good. The car will be back tomorrow without an issue.
“Obviously, doing this amount of laps you plan for it but you don’t expect it because we have had two very good days. Yesterday, we did 100 laps, today we did almost 160 – it was a very good day and we learned a lot,” Steiner added.
“Sometimes we do really expect to do this much and to do better than we expected.”