Steiner: “No way I can attribute” Haas' poor season to Grosjean and Magnussen

F1 News

20 December 2019 at 13:28
  • Bevan Youl

Haas F1 boss Geunther Steiner has said that there is “no way I can attribute” the team’s poor season to drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen, insisting they couldn’t have done any more with the car they had.

Having finished the 2018 season fifth and challenging with fourth placed Renault Haas endured a difficult 2019, struggling to understand their VF-19 throughout the year.

The American teams poor performances were most significant during races, as Grosjean and Magnussen challenged and made Q3 sometimes, as Haas only managed 28 points for a ninth place finish.

“I think in no way can I attribute our not-so-good season to them, and therefore we stay with the same driver pairing,” said Steiner as quoted by MotorsportWeek.
 
“I think we need to be honest and say they couldn’t have done better with the car.
 
“You always can do better when you’re not running into each other, but they just tried too hard at some stage.
 
“I don’t think I can jump to a conclusion that they didn’t do a good job this year.”
 
Steiner also reflected that, although they had a great season in 2018, they can learn from this year to be more critical and overall do a better job.
 
“I think the positive you can take is like last year, we went quite high for where we should be, and it was a great feeling, and then I think you live a little bit on that high, and you cannot assume that you will stay on a high,” he added.
 
“There is not one specific thing you learn, but I think sometimes, we need to be a little bit more critical of what we are doing ourselves, even if it all looks good, it doesn’t mean it is good.

“But there is not one thing that I could tell you we need to look after more this, that and the other. It’s more like in general, we need to do a better job.”