Haas hope to avoid Bahrain "gremlins" after oil leak tops off "clumsy" test

Ewan Gale
Friday 25 February 2022 17:50

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner is hoping for a clean run in Bahrain next month after an oil leak added to the team's "clumsy" first test in Barcelona.

The American-owned team managed only nine laps on Friday morning courtesy of Nikita Mazepin, taking the total mileage to 159 laps between the Russian and Mick Schumacher.

This was despite completing 108 laps between the two drivers on day two at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Further compounding Haas' issues on-track were off-track problems, with the escalation of the conflict involving Russia and Ukraine, forcing the team to remove its Uralkali sponsor from the car as well as the red and blue design.

Referring to the on-track fortunes, Steiner said: “Today we could unfortunately only do nine laps. We had an issue with the oil system in the engine.

"There was a leak that we couldn’t sort over the day, so we didn’t do a lot of running.

"About the rest of the test, the first day was a little bit clumsy, I would say, but we learned enough that on the second day we were well prepared.

"The second day was actually pretty good, we learned a lot. If you think, we had three days of testing but really we only managed one.

"I think we made good progress. Now we have to get prepared for Bahrain. We have information, we know what to do and we will get it done.

"Hopefully, in Bahrain, we don’t have any gremlins.”