Steiner: we must stop wasting energy on braking issues!

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Haas F1 team boss Guenther Steiner says that sorting out its ongoing issues with brakes must be the squad's biggest priority heading into 2018.

He said that the team was paying the price for not being more aggressive at tackling the problem at the start of the year.

The team's drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen have been beset with brake issues all season. Haas started the year using Brembo components, but more recently has tried using Carbon Industrie brakes.

However, the team is yet to make a final decision about which way it will ultimately go.

"We need to know which we go next year," he told ESPN this week. "That is the only aim now on the brakes, because it's getting old.

"We need to have a decision so we are well prepared for next year so we don't have this issue anymore.

"At the moment we are putting too much effort and wasting too much energy to try to sort something out which should be a non-issue."

Even this deep into the current season, Steiner admitted that a decision on which way to go is not imminent.

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"It's still development," he said. "I wouldn't say confidently 'Oh, in three races we will have the solution'.

"We are working to it," he added. "But if we knew we would have put it on already. We are getting closer, but we have not found the solution yet.

"Maybe we should have reacted earlier," he acknowledged. "We waited a little bit and we were hoping.

"A bigger team, with the issues we have, they would have struggled as well," he said. "I wouldn't say easily, but they would have come quicker to a solution, I cannot deny that.

"We made some plans of how to do things and they didn't work out.

"From last year's testing we knew where we were going," he continued. "Then we had the delay because the supplier we wanted to work with were too busy.

"Everyone changed to the new material because of the new regulation change.

"For sure they served their existing clients better than us," he added. "Coming new and still needing to do testing, we should have been more aggressive on the approach."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.