7
Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has warned his drivers to avoid the barriers during this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix, as the team is short on spare parts. The American team has endured a rollercoaster start to the season so far, claiming a respectable number of points, but missing out on much more.
Romain Grosjean is one of only two drivers on the grid who is yet to score points in 2018, having crashed out in Azerbaijan and Spain during the races. However, Steiner says the team can't afford any more collisions, as there is a lack of spare parts.
"The spare situation with old parts, it’s quite bad,” he told the official F1 website. "I think with the spares position we are in now, we had a few crashes lately, so that never helps you. And at the same time we were planning to do the upgrades, so you had both things going on and that’s why you end up with no parts. It’s one of those things.”
"In Monte Carlo, we had issues. We had to take some parts off the car just not to lose them. We were conscious to not put anything at risk. We know how much downforce we lost with that, so we can get back why we lost the time. It’s not like, ‘Wow, we performed bad and we don’t know why’. We know why, and that’s a good thing.”
Despite starting the season strongly and appearing to have the fourth quickest car in the field, Haas currently sits in eighth place in the standings. But Steiner hopes that the team will make gains this weekend in Montreal, as it brings fresh upgrades.
"I’m always careful with updates because I’ve never seen a car in the middle of the season do magic. Our car is not bad. We just need to keep up with doing updates…because we need to develop. Like everything, all the performances need to get better. We need to get quicker.
“It’s a long process from aero development, to aero sign-off… to structural analysis to production, so… in that span of six to eight weeks, we need to find two weeks to get quicker so we can up the game. And that just comes with experience. We need to go through the learning phase there.”
Azerbaijan Grand Prix
I. Hadjar
A. Antonelli
C. Leclerc
3 members have this team as their favourite
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
Indeed. They really appear to be disintegrating midrace... Maybe thats a way to reduce weight over time? ;)