Guenther Steiner was downbeat after seeing the Qualifying potential of his Haas F1 Team fail to translate into a top ten result for either Kevin Magnussen or Romain Grosjean in the Bahrain Grand Prix, and he insists an investigation will take place to identify just where the pace disappeared to on Sunday.
Magnussen had started an encouraging sixth on the grid and was hopeful of fighting with Max Verstappen ahead of him for the title of best of the rest behind Scuderia Ferrari and Mercedes-AMG Motorsport, but instead found himself falling further and further down the field, ultimately seeing the chequered flag down in thirteenth.
This was still better than the outcome of the race for Grosjean, who had found himself right at the back of the field after being hit from behind at turn two by Lance Stroll that caused a puncture, and his race was over due to floor damage after just sixteen laps.
Steiner, the Team Principal of the youngest team on the grid, was unsure to why the pace so dramatically dropped off between Saturday and Sunday, but the team will use the two-day test this Tuesday and Wednesday to do some investigating.
“It was a very disappointing race, not least with Romain (Grosjean) effectively going out on the first lap, having been run into by somebody,” said Steiner. “The performance was just not good enough today to get into the points.
“We need to investigate why this happened, especially after a strong qualifying. We’ll try to find the cause of it. On the plus side, at least we now have two days of testing here, so we can maybe try to learn what happened.
“We go back to square one and start afresh in China.”
