Who will drive for Haas in 2019?

With the rapid improvement in the 2018 car, Haas is getting the attention of a lot of drivers, says team boss Guenther Steiner.

Of their two current drivers, Kevin Magnussen has been consistent in his performance and the American outfit has an option to hold on to him for 2019.

Magnussen’s current teammate Romain Grosjean faces a more uncertain future as he has suffered multiple crashes and is unpredictable in a race. Though he has scored points in only in three races so far, one of them was a fourth-placed finish, the team’s best result to date. If he improves his consistency, Haas may keep their line-up unchanged for next year.

Speaking about their next year’s potential line-up, Steiner said: “I wouldn’t say we are shopping around,”

“You know, a lot of people are shopping with us, put it this way. There are people asking for obvious reasons, and they want to see what we are doing, and if somebody is asking, that doesn’t mean they want to come, in my opinion. They might just be asking to see what other people are doing.

“We will decide after the holiday what we are going to do, but at the moment we don’t think about it. There are a lot of people asking and it is part of my job to know what is happening in the marketplace.”

Despite the number of enquires, Steiner chooses to play it slow. He believes Haas won’t get anything going until the top order settles their line-up.

“It’s all ‘potentially’, and I don’t know where they are. For sure, [drivers] go round and say ‘I’m potentially on the market’, but it doesn’t make it a fact. At the moment it’s more gossip because nobody has pulled the trigger yet on anybody.

“Everyone is looking everywhere but no one has decided what to do, so somebody has to make the first move. I wouldn’t say we have to wait on [other teams’] decisions, but that could trigger the market.”

After Daniel Ricciardo’s move to Renault and Force India take over by the Strolls, there are several top-rated drivers who may be looking to switch teams. But the market is still very unsettled.

“Maybe we will have decided already without knowing what they are doing; I’m just saying them deciding will trigger the market because then we have the facts of what somebody is doing – it’s not just asking around and presuming then we have got facts. If someone announces something, then we have actual facts to work with.”