After losses in consecutive races in the 2018 season, even rivals cannot believe Haas’s bad luck, says team boss Gunther Steiner.
Powered by Ferrari’s latest engine, Haas showed a lot of promise in its pre-season test and brought huge aero upgrades in the last few races.
But despite all the hard work, the outfit could not get above the eighth place in the constructors’ championship due to a combination of first lap incidents, pitstop issues, melting bodywork and plain bad luck.
Steiner is unwilling to wait until the outfit’s luck changes and wants to be proactive.
Speaking after the Canadian GP, Steiner said: “You never stop and say ‘we need a break’ and wait until you get lucky. We always try to do our best and come up with our best we can do.
“We showed in Canada where Kevin was struggling on Friday but still managed to quality 11th. And what happened with Romain in the end, we have not a lot of influence on that.
“We don’t want to find excuses with that. It is one of the circumstances. In FP3 you have an issue like this, what can you do? We are very honest with ourselves.”
Does Haas deserve a change in luck, we asked and he said: “I wouldn’t say deserve it because that is a little bit presumptuous. But we wish [for it] because other teams have come to me to say, ‘what have you done to get it all?’
“For me, the weirdest thing is the groundhog running into us. There are 20 cars out there, a groundhog on their own, and we are going to hit it! And on the nose, not on the wing!
“If you try to do that, you can try for a 1000 years and it will never happen. It is one of these freak things. We don’t deserve it – but we need to work hard and it will come to us. [You have to] hope that lady luck comes to you.”
Although the American outfit scored no points in the last two races, Steiner is not worried about the team’s overall performance.
“What gets you over the disappointment is that four weeks ago in Barcelona we were the best of the rest by a good margin,” he said.
“We haven’t lost that. Is it circumstances? You always try to analyse this and to try to get better for the next event.”
