Haas F1 Team team principal Guenther Steiner says that the problems the team are currently experiencing would be more easily resolved if their car was slower.
Although the American outfit had been billed as the favourite to lead the battle in the midfield at the beginning of the season, they have struggled due to not being able to understand how the car uses tyres, with Steiner branding the car the “strangest” he has worked on to date.
Steiner said that with the car demonstrating occasions of being on the pace, it makes it more difficult to rectify the problems than it would be if it was consistently uncompetitive.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, and we know that for the rest of the season that we need to learn to manage the car and the tyres better,” said Steiner, speaking to Motorsport.com.
“If you have a bad car you get a big problem, but if you think with the car which sometimes performs the problem is smaller, you know, it is even bigger. Because it is somewhere, and you just need to find it, and it is difficult.”
The Italian said it was important that the team fixed its issues with tyre wear, or else they risk running into the same problem next year.
He was asked what he thought to be an achievable target for the rest of this season, to which he said: “A battle. A realistic target result-wise, I have no idea.
“To get as much understanding as possible between the tyre and the car. I mean the car we have got influence, obviously, but the tyre… if that is ruling what your aero does you can’t do a lot about it, you know, and to find that one out is difficult.”
He added: “So I don’t really know. [The goal is] to get a good understanding, so we are not falling in this trap next year, but again the tyre will change next year.”
Even though the design process for next’s year car is suffering due to the current difficulties, Steiner is well aware that the team need to build for the future.
Talking about the design of next year’s car, he said: “It is well organised. You have to do it, because you cannot just live day by day. You need to see the bigger picture as well, and that is part of what you need to do.
“You cannot just get eaten up by it. You get eaten up on the weekend, and then you try to go back to a mission about what you want to do also in future.
“And there is a short term, and a long term which you have to have in your mind and just act accordingly, but never panicking to something, because that doesn’t help as well,” Steiner concluded.
