Grosjean baffled by Q1 crash at Suzuka

The Haas driver lost control of his car at Turn 4 during Q1, having gone wide in the previous corner.

He crashed against the wall and caused heavy damage to his car, forcing the session to be red-flagged with less than two minutes remaining.

Grosjean admitted his car's handling changed drastically in his second run in Q1, and said he had no clear explanation as to why he had crashed.

"I don't know. I went faster than the previous lap but slower than in FP3, so I don't know," said Grosjean. "From FP3 to qualy I think we made a really good choice technically, the car felt really nice in that first run.

"I had a massive moment in Turn 11 where I lost more than half a second, so I wasn't worried that we would not go through, so I came back in the garage, we added a tiny bit of front wing and went again.

"And in Turn 1 already I had a big snap. I didn't really know where it came from. I kept going and I went into [Turn] 3, but by the time I went into [Turn] 3 I just lost the rear and it was too late.

"Honestly it's not crystal clear. Yes, I pushed a bit more, but we we are talking little compared to the handling different I had."

Grosjean finished in 16th position, but is set to move up the grid thanks to penalties to drivers in front of him.

The French driver, however, felt his car had the pace to be in Q3.

"I'm sorry because honest the car had the pace to be in the top 10 today," he added. "I've got no explanation about what's the difference between the first one and the second run. In the car we added 1 percent of aero balance.

"Not a disaster, but clearly the top 10 was very, very possible today."

Despite the damage to his car, Grosjean was optimistic he will not need a gearbox change that could translate into a penalty.

"I haven't heard the latest, but I think we are going to be fine and there's a few penalties in front of us so we can start 13th or something like that," he said.

Team boss Guenther Steiner admitted that a second major crash in two weekends was frustrating, but insisted that the team was able to take it in its stride.

"It's the last thing you need at this moment in time," he told Motorsport.com. "We had one last week, now one this week.

"It's racing, what can you do about it? You try to do your best, and it happens. It's never good, but I think we can get through it.

"It shows that the team is pretty strong, even in this situation nobody panics. We had to fly some new front suspension out after Malaysia which now we're ready to put on, but we had enough bodywork here."

Additional reporting by Jamie Klein and Adam Cooper