Steiner hopeful for 2023: 'It will only get better'

Haas has had an interesting few years. In 2018, the team could still be satisfied with a fifth-place finish among constructors, but in the following years the results kept dropping. In 2021, it was therefore decided to sacrifice that year and focus all attention on 2022 and the new rules that would come into effect that year. Haas did not gain a single point in 2021 but the improvement was immediately visible the following year: in 2022, Haas finished eighth, just above AlphaTauri.

Looking back on that choice, Steiner is very clear: "No regrets. I would do it exactly the same way again. That was a step back then that was needed to take two steps forward. It gave us a good foundation for the future."

'Haas is here for the long term'

That future looks bright, according to Steiner. “Our technical team, which is designing the car, when they started to design the ’22 car in ’21, it was a lot of good people, but they didn’t work as a team together before,” Steiner explained. "Now they have done one car – and it wasn’t a bad car, I must say – but now they’ve worked a year together. They work as a team now, so I think the next car will be better."

"Obviously the result in the end – finishing eighth – am I completely happy? Not really," Steiner admits. "But in the end it’s a good starting point for going forward. Haas F1 is here to stay. We are solid and I think we just can get better from now on.”