Haas refusing to throw in the towel on its "impossible" job

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner is refusing to give up the fight on what he has conceded is an "impossible" task in attempting to overhaul rivals Alfa Romeo in the constructors' championship.

While the battle for third between Racing Point, McLaren, Renault and Ferrari is more high profile, the scrap between Alfa Romeo and Haas is equally as important as both teams battle to secure the additional funds to top up their budgets for 2021.

While just five points separate the teams, the fact Haas has only scored three points from one ninth-place finish from Romain Grosjean in the Eifel Grand Prix, and Kevin Magnussen's 10th in Hungary, underlines the difficulty of its task.

Asked, though, if he was confident Haas could close the gap, Steiner said: “Yeah, you focus still on it.

"You always want to do better than the people in front of you to catch up with them, and you just need to be there when the opportunity comes."

After finishing ninth in last season's standings ahead of point-less Williams, Steiner is determined to avoid a repeat of that scenario.

Pointing to the improved pace of Magnussen in recent weeks, Steiner added: "I think in Imola, if Kevin hadn’t been taken out by Vettel on lap one, he was pretty fast.

“He was faster than the Alfas in the race so he could have done something like this and that could happen at any race weekend.

"You cannot say ‘Oh, we are not trying to do it any more’, for sure, we will try to get that place. We know that it is not easy but that is what you try to do - you try to do the impossible.”

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