2017 review: Steady sophomore season for Haas

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F1i's look back over the 2017 Formula 1 world championship season team-by-team and driver-by-driver puts Haas in the spotlight.

Haas F1 Team

We're used to seeing Formula 1 teams suffer from that 'difficult second album' syndrome. After scoring a unexpectedly bright breakthrough success during their début season, all too often such teams suffer a sophomore slump as the reality of the year-on-year grind hits home.

Experienced team manager Guenther Steiner has made sure that this hasn't happened at Haas, although he's also admitted that he might have been too conservative at times and turned attention away from development of the VF-17 too early.

The hit-and-miss car certainly needed work - at times it looked a strong contender, but elsewhere issues with handling kept resurfacing especially with regard to tyres and brakes. Ultimately Haas scored points in 11 of the 20 races and were eighth in the constructors standings for the second year in succession, and not far off overhauling Toro Rosso and Renault at that. They twice qualified in the top six, and Romain Grosjean took their best result with sixth place in Austria.

It might be more solid than spectacular, but the sustained performance shows that Haas is here to stay.

Read on: Romain Grosjean

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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.