Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner knows that his error-prone driver Romain Grosjean is very close to a race ban as with nine penalty points on his license he is perilously close to the 12 points limit.
The Frenchman needs to stay out of trouble between now and the end of the season to ensure he does not accumulate the dreaded 12-points that will force him to sit out a race
Grosjean has had a season of ups and downs, making glaring mistakes when he crashed all by himself in Baku not long after a first lap melee he triggered on the opening lap of the Spanish Grand Prix.
Most recently, in Singapore, he was penalised for ignoring blue flags and attracted the wrath of F1 Race Director Charlie Whiting.
On Thursday ahead of the Russian Grand Prix weekend, speaking to reporters about a possible race ban, Steiner said, "He should be very careful but I think he knows that. We are on very thin ice at the moment with that."
Grosjean explained, "I'm not here to crash, I'm not here to do anything silly. It's F1, and we still need to deliver a good performance. So I'll make sure that I don't do anything silly, but I'll still be pushing and racing and doing my job."
"When you look back at the points I got, some you can really explain, some others are more questionable, but there they are."
Steiner like Grosjean believes the penalty his driver received in Singapore was harsh but at the same time he remained realistic, "Ultimately he got the penalty and now he has to be careful."
"Fair or not fair, we couldn't score points anyway, so it doesn't really matter for us. It's just not ideal for Romain's penalty point account," added Steiner.
Meanwhile, Steiner confirmed that the team would announce their 2019 drivers within the next two weeks, with the smart money on them retaining their current driver line-up of Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen.
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