F1 News
Steiner sees bright spot in difficult season: 'Fortunately we have Nico'
- Ludo van Denderen
Again, the gradually inevitable happened: a good qualifying performance by (again) Nico Hulkenberg could not be converted into precious points a day later at the Hungarian Grand Prix. It remains Haas F1's thorny issue. On qualifying day often top, on Sunday almost always flop.
Looking back on the first half of the season, Guenther Steiner, Haas team boss, talks about 'a good start', but adds that the team has not been able to keep up with the competition in terms of updates. Yet there is also a bright spot: "The positives are that we now have Nico in the team, which has been a big help to get all the performance out and he’s working really hard to keep the team motivated and to push, he also fits in fantastically."
When the Italian has to name another positive from the past six months, he comes to a striking observation: the pit stops. "There are lots of other things that are positive, such as our pit stops. We’re pretty solid at the moment – fingers crossed it keeps on like this – but we can’t really show what we can do because, I wouldn’t say the lack of race pace, but with the degradation of the tires in the race, the most important thing we don’t bring home points."
Focus Haas partly on next season
So neither did that happen in Hungary last weekend. Still, Steiner says the result was not as bad as it seemed. After all, his Haas team was not far off the competition. Nor does Steiner want to write off the season at this stage. For that, the Italian has a clear reason.
"Upgrades for this season will also be implemented on next year’s car and that’s why we’ve decided to continue with this year’s car development to really understand our problems and where we need to put effort into making the car better for next year. Right now, we’re developing both cars in parallel, and we don’t really know yet when we switch over only to 2024," Steiner said.