“We know that Monza will not be a strong point for us” – Steiner on Haas’ Expected Italian GP Performance

Team Principal of Haas F1 Team, Guenther Steiner, claims that the team are ‘not in a position’ to fight at high-speed, low downforce tracks this year, which will result in a difficult Italian Grand Prix for the team at the sixteenth race of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship.

The American outfit has opted for two sets of Hard (C2) tyres, three sets of Medium (C3) tyres, and eight sets of Soft (C4) tyres for the weekend allocation, as the final race of the current triple header approaches. Steiner did, however, start his Italian Grand Prix preview with a reflection of last weekend’s race at Zandvoort, where bad luck cost the team a better result.

“We knew that our car in Zandvoort should be performing well because the track has high-speed and medium-speed corners – a little bit like Silverstone and Austria – where we performed pretty well. Mick got the best out of it I’d say, and it was very good of him to get into Q3.

“Unfortunately, Kevin didn’t get used to the track to put a good performance in, he was getting there but we just ran out of time for him. All in all, we know that the car is performing, we just needed to get a little bit lucky, and we could’ve had points on Sunday, but qualifying was not too bad.”

When asked about the pit wall’s morale when a race doesn’t go to plan, the fifty-seven-year-old expressed the team’s determination to continue:

“You never give up on the pit wall, you always try to get the best out of it. We almost got it turned around with the safety car and the VSC but we were just a little bit too far behind. The pit stop was one of those things, the front jack got stuck when the car was up which has never happened in seven years, and the one time it happens, it happens during a race.

“We’re doing around 50 to 100 practice pit stops over a race weekend and it gets stuck on race day. It’s unfortunate but we always keep on pushing whatever happens and that is what we’ll continue to do.” 

Looking ahead to Monza

“We know that Monza will not be a strong point for us,” says Steiner, “All the high-speed, low downforce race tracks don’t suit our car. This year we’re not in a position to fight on these race tracks but the team in Italy is working hard on some solutions for next year and I’m sure we’ll get them so next year we’ll be in a better place.

“We use these races to gain experience and collect data for the development of next year so we’re in a much better place hopefully than this year. We always try to do our best, you never know, there could be rain there. You always need to be 100 percent, you never say this will be a bad race. If we know that it will be challenging, we are working harder.”

Steiner then opened up on the process of developing the car for the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship, after Haas moved its design office to Maranello early last year:

“We established the department in Italy at the beginning of last year. We started almost from nothing and what we’ve produced for this year I think is a very good result. With the lessons learned this year, we just keep on trying to work on next year’s car even harder and I think we’re in a better place because the group now is more in-tune and they’re seeing what we need to do to on this new regulation car for next year.

“We’ve switched to the design of next year’s car a few months ago, so the team keeps on learning and keep working hard so that we get a good car for 2023.”

Despite struggling in a number of races this season, Haas still have plenty to smile about with a current score of thirty-four points and seventh place in the Constructors’ Championship. This is a significant improvement after finishing tenth in 2021, with zero points.

Image: Haas F1 Press Site.