Broken rim the cause for Formula One team Haas early bath says boss Guenther Steiner

Haas

Broken rim the cause for Haas early bath says Steiner

Small problem, big consequences

Ian Parkes

Friday 21 February 2020 20:17

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Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has revealed a broken rim caused a premature end to the first pre-season test.

Kevin Magnussen had just completed four laps in the VF-20 in the afternoon session when he was sent spinning off Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya, into the gravel and clipping a wall.

An investigation identified a problem with a wheel spacer that damaged a rim, which in turn caused a puncture, leading to the team calling their programme to a halt and missing the final three and a half hours of running.

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Although Romain Grosjean also missed 30 minutes in the morning session with a leaking water pipe, Steiner had few complaints with his team's test run overall.

"The spacer between the wheel and the hub broke, and the wheel machined itself in bits and pieces, the air got out and the tyre went off, and he went off," said Steiner.

"When you look at it now it was a pretty simple failure, but it shouldn't happen.

"To fix the car would have taken too long for the few laps we could have done at the end so we decided to call it a day and pack in.

"We could do that because the rest of the week had gone well, the first two days were very good. Of course, you always want to drive more, and we missed the three hours at the end, but all in all, we have had a good week."

Steiner also shook off what has appeared to be a relatively unimpressive set of times for Haas.

Asked whether there was any concern, he replied: "No. I don't know about that because I don't know what the others are doing.

'We went through our test programme, to do what we wanted to do and not to look at others because there is no pole position or points up for grabs in testing. We're pretty happy with what we've achieved.

"We've a better understanding of the car, and we will work well with what we understand to make it better.

"How good it is compared to the others, I wouldn't commit to saying because everybody runs different programmes, and some people are very quick, and there are a few ways to get very quick in testing.

"We will see next week maybe, but for sure we will see in Australia in qualifying."