Haas F1 boss Guenther Steiner is hoping for a turnaround in the team's fortunes in the remaining 14 races of the 2018 season.
The team is currently tied with Toro Rosso in seventh place in the constructors standings. But Steiner points out that a run of bad luck in the opening races of the year so far has worked against them.
“We wish for [an end to bad luck] because even other teams come to me, ‘Guys what have you done to get it all?" Steiner told RACER magazine this week.
The most bizarre piece of ill-fortune to date had to be Romain Grosjean running into a groundhog during practice for the Canadian Grand Prix last week.
"The weirdest thing is this groundhog or whatever this animal was, running into it," Steiner agreed. "We have not a lot of influence on that one. I am not trying to find excuses for it, it’s one of the circumstances.
"There are 20 cars out there and there’s a groundhog on the road and we are going hit it on the nose. We are not hitting it on the wing, we are hitting it on the nose."
Already running low on components coming into Montreal, it was a front wing that Haas could ill-afford to lose. Fortunately Grosjean was unhurt in the incident; the groundhog, not so much.
“If you tried to do that, you can try for a thousand years and it will never happen," Steiner sighed. "It’s one of these freak things."
Even so, Steiner resisted the idea that the team 'deserved' better luck for the rest of the season.
“I wouldn’t say deserve it, that’s a little bit presumptuous," he said. "We don’t deserve it, we need to work hard.
“You never stop. You never say, ‘Oh, we need a break’ and just wait until you get lucky.
"We always try to do our best and come up with the best with what we can do. I think we showed that [in Canada].
“I think we are very honest with ourselves," he continued. "We are not saying, ‘Oh it was just a bad day, let’s move onto the next one.’
"We are doing things to understand properly why the tyres worked, why they didn’t work and all that stuff.
"You go through it properly because everybody is disappointed.
"What gets you over the disappointment two, three hours later is four weeks ago in Barcelona we were best of the rest by a good margin - and we haven’t lost that."
"[Hopefully] it will come to us, and then just hope the lady luck comes to you.”
Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
