‘We have to stabilise at some point,’ Guenther Steiner deems Haas’ post-July form ‘no longer unacceptable’
Follow Us
Haas team principal Guenther Steiner
Haas, especially the returning Kevin Magnussen started the season brilliantly. After not scoring a point in all of 2021, the team (Magnussen) had already scored 15 after the fourth round of the championship. But then the team didn’t have a sniff of the points until Silverstone and subsequently Austria, where they scored double points finishes.
In almost four months now, they have only scored 2 points: Kevin Magnussen’s 9th-place finish in Austin. So they have been trounced in the Constructor’s championship by Aston Martin, and AlphaTauri is also just a point behind. As per PlanetF1, Guenther Steiner thinks the situation is ‘no longer acceptable’.
As quoted by Motorsport.com on the team’s 2022 season, he said: “Sometimes we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I put it down to the last two difficult years – you can’t go from the level we were at in the last two years to the best in one go. We are going through a bad patch at the moment but we have to stabilise at some point. This situation is no longer acceptable.”
Steiner considers this season to be a ‘second start’ for Haas: “For us, this year is like a second start because we didn’t do any development last year, we were racing where we were racing and the competition wasn’t huge. As I always say, the higher you go, the more the air gets thin, the harder it is for the drivers, for the team, for everybody.”
Guenther Steiner looking on the ‘bright side’
Haas, who are yet to confirm Mick Schumacher for 2023, have scored 38 points this year, which is 35 more than they scored for the entirety of 2020 and 2021 combined. So there is definitely some progress, even if further improvements are needed. Guenther Steiner concurs that there is no need for big changes: “I look at the bright side. It’s frustrating but I’m not negative about our performance, it’s just a bit frustrating.”
But the Italian does think that the team can certainly do better, and approach things more ‘thoroughly’: “We can’t expect to suddenly go from where we were last year to where everyone expects us to be. I think we can do better. I think we just need to think about how to approach things a bit more thoroughly. I don’t think we need to make a lot of changes in personnel or anything.”
Steiner believes that ‘at the moment’, it’s more about gaining confidence to perform at a higher level all of the time, and this is something one can learn. The more important thing, he thinks, is to not make the same mistakes.
/techfirstnow/media/agency_attachments/kATjCXskQdJKkXN0OuqW.png)