Haas F1 Team Boss Guenther Steiner says he was pleased with the squad’s performance at the Malaysian Grand Prix, considering how low down the order they had started the race.
Despite lining up in sixteenth and seventeenth place, Steiner feels driver’s Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen both did a stellar job, making up a number of places, but ultimately it was too much to ask for them to make it into the points.
“A better than expected end of the weekend, even if we didn’t get points, which is always what we’re here for.
“Starting 16th and 17th, it’s difficult to score points. I think we had a good race. We overtook a lot of other people and we showed that the car can do it.”
The Italian believes the team’s performance during qualifying is what is letting them down on a race weekend, and if they can improve on that, they will have a much better chance of a good result on race day.
“Our assessment from yesterday that we just underperformed in qualifying is the correct one. We need to find the pace in qualifying that we found in the race. If we start in a better position, we’ll be back in the points.“
Although they did not manage to take home any points in Malaysia, Steiner was happy with the effort put in by everyone in the team, and said he is proud of what they were able to achieve, considering their tough start to the weekend.
“Everybody did a good job. Nobody gave up yesterday. We came back prepared and everyone delivered.
“All in all, it was a very rough weekend for everybody. It would’ve been nice to have a point – we didn’t – but we’re still proud from where we started off and where we ended up.”
