The double points finish last time out in Japan will have given the Haas F1 Team a much-needed confidence boost heading into their home Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas, according to team principal Guenther Steiner.
Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean finished eighth and ninth at the Suzuka International Racing Course, with the six points they scored moving them into seventh place in the Constructors’ Championship ahead of the Renault Sport Formula 1 Team.
Now Steiner says the team is ‘pumped up’ heading into their second United States Grand Prix, and he hopes it enables them to build on their Japan result this weekend.
“It’s always motivating,” said Steiner. “What these guys work for is success. For us, success is to be scoring points. We scored with two cars for the second time since we entered Formula One, which is less than two years.
“Everybody is pumped up and now we come to the United States, the home country of Haas F1 Team. For sure it’s motivating and everybody wants to keep it going.”
Steiner admits having a strong result in Japan does not necessarily mean they will be strong at the Circuit of the Americas, but after Grosjean scored a point in their first home Grand Prix in 2016, he hopes for better in 2017.
“There is no recipe to that one,” admitted Steiner. “We just go out in FP1, see where we are, and go from there. As I always say, to make predictions this year, in the midfield, is impossible. Nobody can predict it.
“People wrote us off after Malaysia. They said we’d scored the last of our points this year. Then we came back in Japan with two cars in the points. Anything can happen.
“It doesn’t depend only on how we are doing, but how good the other teams are. That’s obvious, but by being so tight, anything can happen. Last year we scored a point at COTA and we’ll try to do better this year.”