Steiner confident Haas has no major weaknesses

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner is confident the American outfit does not have any major weaknesses it needs to address in order to chase better results.

In only its third season in Formula 1, Haas finished fifth behind Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and Renault last year. Although that is the highest constructors’ championship position in the team’s short history, Haas often had the fourth-quickest car and missed out on a number of opportunities to score significant points in the early part of 2018. Steiner acknowledges the team failed to take every chance, but says that is in part due to the quality of its rivals as it gets closer to the front of the field.

“I don’t think there are any obvious weakness,” Steiner told RACER. “I just think that the higher up you get, the air gets thinner. I wouldn’t say it gets more aggressive but you need to be perfect. Every little thing you miss counts more, or at least you think it does anyway. You fight with better teams so you miss opportunities.

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“So there’s not one thing which stands out completely that we are not good at, we need to get better at everything. You know Formula 1 is a very difficult business and you just need to be perfect if you want to be on top, and we are by no means perfect.”

Although a number of Haas employees have experience with other F1 teams, Steiner says there is no substitute for a team learning as a group, and therefore has faith there is more to come the longer it is in the sport.

“I put that one down a little bit to our immaturity. We have got very experienced people, but you need to make your own experiences. It needs to be in the process that you get experience, and everything needs to be perfect to compete at that level.

“So I think we’re getting better by the day, but the day will come that we go backwards and some people cannot wait for that. So do we with other teams, that’s competition, so I’m not getting upset with them, but I think all in all we cannot be unhappy with what we’ve done so far.”