Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner insists the team are still moving forward after a disappointing run of results and still wants to fight with Toro Rosso in the Championship.
“[Germany] showed we are stronger than Toro Rosso,” he told ESPN. “We are not always stronger than Toro Rosso but on a good weekend we can be better than them.
“In my opinion that is an achievement,” he insisted. “For us that’s pretty good in our first year of Formula One because Toro Rosso has been here a long time. We were very close to the McLarens, which isn’t bad.”
After such a strong start to the season, scoring points in three out of the first four races, but since the return to Europe Haas F1 have struggled to develop the car.
“I think we started very good and always when you start very good the expectations get higher. We still have to not forget we are only 12 races in and there is no magic in this business.
“Is the car getting worse? No. Are we not clever enough to sort the problems? No. We have a good team of people,” Steiner insisted. “We had an issue with the brakes [in Germany] which is no secret, a lot of the teams did, but I think we got on top of it.
“We had a problem with the cooling behind the car – when you are too long behind someone you get less cooling. It went away again when we got out in fresh air. It’s one of those things, this is hard for braking. I think Singapore will be hard, we will be on the limit.
“We still have some [new] parts for Singapore,” he added. “A front wing, a floor and rear brake ducts. I hope they work, we developed them a few months ago and we’ll try to make more points.”
