Haas confirm overheating brakes caused double DNF in Austria

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has confirmed both cars suffered identical brake problems during the Formula 1 season opener in Austria.

Neither Haas car reached the chequered flag at the Red Bull Ring and although the tyre problems of 2019 appeared to have been solved, a brake condition could be revealing itself.

Steiner said: “I don’t know why it came up, we are still investigating.

“They overheated peculiarly. It was not at the level that you would say that we needed to manage it to get to the end of the race, but we didn’t think it was this dramatic that they would break or would not last.

“We haven’t seen Kevin’s [Magnussen] car yet, but it will be similar to Romain’s [Grosjean]. We were just calling Romain in on the radio when he had the failure, because we saw that it had gone extreme his wear as well.

“They just wore out and, due to overheating, so we need to find out why we had all this overheating today, but we were pretty sure that we could survive. Brakes are always an issue here, but we did not expect it to be this much of an issue that we could not finish the race.”

Questioned on whether the problems were a fundamental flaw of the 2020 car or a one off, Steiner explained the team may have unwittingly caused the problem by worrying about the aerodynamic effects of running too much cooling.

He added: “I think we were too aggressive on the non-cooling. Obviously, cooling the brakes has an aerodynamic influence on the car, and that’s why you go with as little as possible, but it is just an estimation you make, how much cooling you need.

“We didn’t try to do it, for sure you go to the limit of what you think, but you try not to go over the limit for aero reasons, because cooling, normally it shouldn’t be an issue, but you lose more aero performance.

“We didn’t take an unnecessary risk because we didn’t expect it to be this bad.”

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