Formula 1: Haas struggling to find solutions for 2019 woes, says Guenther Steiner

Haas

Haas struggling to find solutions for 2019 woes

The tyre issues are killing them.

Martin Macdonald

Sunday 15 September 2019 16:30

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Haas team principal Guenther Steiner admits that the team may not find a solution to their constant tyre problems before the end of the 2019 Formula 1 season.

Throughout the campaign, Haas have struggled to implement the correct tyre strategy by identifying the most suitable window for a certain compound, often leaving Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean languishing behind other cars that have tyres in better condition.

The Italian Grand Prix last weekend was the third race in a row in which neither Haas driver scored a point, and Steiner isn’t sure their problems can be fixed this season

“At the moment this is our struggle,” he said.

“We will try to get solutions to it as soon as possible to see if we can better it. I think we understand, but I don’t know if we can get solutions this year.

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“But racing like this, it kills you. Everyone knows how I like to race, and this is something [else].

“You go out with new tyres, the tyres work for two laps then the temperatures go down and you are done again.

“We are always so on the edge with everything that a little thing happens and we are gone. The drop off is not a tenth or two, it is drop off that can mean a second.

“We are so on the edge that I don’t know where we are. Just track temperature can make a difference for us, being in or out. So we are there or thereabouts or we are out.”

However, Steiner reckons that their poor results have also come from having an underdeveloped car compared to their competitors, as their first-spec model performs at the same level as the current one.

“Since two or three races we know pretty well where we are,” he continued.

“Changing over to the Melbourne spec helped a lot to understand it and get the reality of where we are. That is why it was done.

“The Melbourne spec is as good as this [current] one. We know what that means: we didn’t make any progress, everybody else did.

“In the first year with the new regulations you have to make progress and we didn’t. That is where we are. That is why the car was good for testing and Melbourne and then we stood still.”