Steiner: Points total shows Haas progress

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says this year's points total shows just how much his team has improved compared to last year.

In 2016, Haas started life in F1 with two top-six finishes, yielding 18 points from those first two starts. However, the team only added 11 further points to its total during over the remainder of the season, and this year wanted to improve on that total. Romain Grosjean's sixth place in Austria was the best result of the year for Haas so far, but also matched last season's points tally after seven top 10 finishes in nine races.

With the season-opener in Australia resulting in a double retirement and Kevin Magnussen also failing to finish in Austria when well-placed due to reliability issues, Steiner described the team's points total to date as "unlucky".

"It says that we have bettered ourselves, we've got more consistent, we've got two drivers who can be in the points," he said. "It's so tough in the midfield, you never know what's coming next. Maybe we've got three or four races where we don't score points, we need to prepared for that as well.

"Every weekend when you go out on Friday, it's 'where will we be?'. Or more like, 'where are the others going to be?'. That counts even more. If somebody can get in a better window of performance, then you are behind them. It's always 'where will the other ones be this race', because we don't have their data and stuff. All in all we can say we are having a good second season so far."

Despite being best of the rest in Austria, Steiner says there are no guarantees Haas will be able to repeat that performance in Silverstone this weekend, where the team will use a new brake supplier.

"I don't expect anything. Every race was a surprise this year for everybody. I think it will be a hard battle again and I think it will be nothing we can predict at the moment because it's so competitive. It's competitive in the front, the first two three and it's competitive in the midfield. There's always whatever you think doesn't always happen so I don't make any guesses here."