Haas F1 says it is still targeting to finish ahead of Renault at the end of the season. Renault currently occupies fourth place in the constructor's standings, sitting just 6 points ahead of rivals Haas.
The gap between the pair was shortened significantly following the Belgian Grand Prix, where Renault failed to score any points. Haas managed to bring home ten, with Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen crossing the line in P7 and P8 respectively.
Due to the aerodynamic changes that will come into play for next season, Haas team principal Guenther Steiner confirmed a number of weeks ago that Haas has stopped development on its 2018 car to focus on 2019. Despite this, he is still targeting the 'best of the rest' spot at the end of the year.
"We still want to go for a better position in the championship, which is fourth," said Steiner. "We’ll still try hard on that one, as we’ve done a lot of work on the engineering side of things. Nevertheless, everybody on the design and aero teams are working on the 2019 car."
"I don’t think our performance will drop off. Everybody is still bringing stuff to the racetrack – stuff that was designed and developed months ago. We are doing the same. We will not stop here. We’ll bring some smaller upgrades."
Although it is a relatively new team, Steiner is confident that the American outfit has some strong people working on the 2019 design. Although it will be a second shake-up of regulations in what will be their fourth year of racing in F1, the Italian is sure it will produce another strong car next year.
"It’s always with a new regulation, to find the right interpretation, how to get the best out of the regulation in its first year. It’s not a complete redesign of the car. We’ve got a lot of good people, who for sure will try to find big gains with little effort, but everybody else is doing the same. They are all very clever people here in the Formula 1 paddock. In the end, we will come up with very good performing cars again next year."
Fergal Walsh
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