Renault and McLaren were just “lucky” in the last three races, claims Haas Team principal Gunther Steiner.
Haas had a fantastic pace in the preseason and many believed it will be the top midfield team this year. But once the season started, the outfit fumbled on the track and made some costly mistakes that has sent them down to the seventh place in the team’s standings.
At Australia, the American outfit looked like it was going for a double top-five finish but, it was forced into retirement due to a pitstop problem. In the recently concluded Chinese GP, the team scored a single point because of Kevin Magnussen’s 10th place finish.
Magnussen’s fifth-place finish at Bahrain, gave the team the rest of its points, taking its tally to 11. That score puts the team 14 points behind Renault and 17 points below McLaren.
Steiner admitted the loss at Australia has cost the team dearly.
“The first three races we were always there,” he told Motorsport.com.
“At the moment it’s between us, Renault and McLaren for fourth. I think the picture is quite clear as it stands at the moment and I hope we can finally pull one off because the other ones are getting lucky and we are getting unlucky.
“But we need to make our own luck, to be honest. Australia wasn’t great and otherwise, we would be where we should be.”
In the Chinese GP, Haas turned out to be unlucky once again as Renault and Force India overtook both their drivers after changing into fresh rubbers.
The American outfit did not have enough data on the softer tyres to try a similar strategy since their cars could not get the tyres to the right temperature.
The tyre problem can be solved as it adds more knowledge and with help of in-season development. The team hopes to perform better in the upcoming races.
“We need to keep on doing what we’re doing,” he said.
“Every race we learn more about the tyres and we build up our knowledge base of the tyres from this year, and we have planned for upgrades on the car.
“Our whole plan this year is different from last year.
“Last year, we knew we wouldn’t have many upgrades because we decided early in the season that we wouldn’t bring that many updates as we turned our focus to next year’s car.
“But this year, we made the decision early in the season that we will bring more updates.
“So, it’s down to how good are our updates, but also how good are the updates of the opposition?”
