Guenther Steiner admitted the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season was a very difficult one to predict for his Haas F1 Team, with the form of the VF-22 fluctuating throughout the year.
After not developing at all their 2021 car that ended that season without scoring any points, the 2022 campaign was much better, with Haas securing eighth place in the Constructors’ Championship ahead of Scuderia AlphaTauri and Williams Racing.
They started the year superbly with a remarkable fifth place finish for Formula 1 returnee Kevin Magnussen in the Bahrain Grand Prix, and this was followed up by another top ten finish in the subsequent Saudi Arabian Grand Prix for the Dane.
However, thereafter the form of the car was erratic at best, and although they were able to score points with both Magnussen and Mick Schumacher in the Austrian and British Grand Prix weekends, Steiner, the Team Principal at Haas, admitted it was difficult to predict from one weekend to the next if they were going to be contenders for the top ten.
“I didn’t expect a fall after a few races,” said Steiner to Motorsport.com. “I think in Australia, we had a s**t race.
“I didn’t expect that big falloff after the first two races, but it happened. And then you think, now we need to come back. It took us a little bit of time.
“Then we had again Silverstone and Austria, which was very good. That’s why I say, [it was] very difficult to predict.”
After their double points finish at Silverstone, Haas managed just three more points across the rest of the season, although they also secured their first ever pole position when Magnussen surprised everyone in Qualifying for the São Paulo Grand Prix.
And Steiner admitted it was confusing to why Haas’ pace seemed to vary, even when they brought updates to the car, something they will look into during the off-season ahead of the 2023 campaign.
“Where I think it’s a bit of a mystery is we didn’t have an upgrade in Austria and Silverstone, and we were very fast,” said Steiner. “Then we put the upgrade on, and we were not fast again.
“And then all of a sudden, we were fast again. These are the things which are a little bit mysterious. I wouldn’t say we know 100% what it is. It’s a combination of things.
“I think once we launched the car, we had a bit of difficulty to find more performance straightaway, or the performance finds were too small to make changes to the car.”
