Steiner remains cautious over Haas' plans for future growth

The Haas F1 Team remains wary about pushing forward with any major expansion plans until more is known about the future direction of the sport.

Teams are currently locked in discussions with Formula 1's new commercial rights holders over key decisions about technical regulations, governance and revenue sharing from 2021.

Haas boss Guenther Steiner says that until these matters have been decided, it's impossible for his team to decide about future investment.

"Until we know exactly what is happening for 2021, we always grow but very slowly," Steiner told Motorsport.com. "We don't know what's happening in two years.

"If we do that now it could be only for one year. The earliest you can get something out of it is 2020, and you maybe have to change again because 2021 is coming.

"We are not investing another $20m or $30m, another 100 people," he insisted. "We are not going to do that. That would be unwise at this moment.

"We will stay where we are. We can operate pretty well and we try to keep up."

Ever since joining Formula 1 at the start of 2016, the Haas team has always been determined to do things its own way.

Its close allience with Ferrari has helped it control costs, but also provoked complaints that it might get too much help from Maranello.

"I think there is more than one Ferrari in the race now," Fernando Alonso commented recently, hinting that the VF-18 might have too much technological overlap with the Ferrari SF71H.

• Steiner: 'No midfield in F1 anymore, everyone can score points'

But Steiner is unrepentant about the team's way of tackling F1.

"Other new teams who tried [this approach] before us were a little stupid," he told Dutch publication Formule 1.

"Don't misunderstand me, there were some intelligent people and they did nothing wrong. But they did a lot of the same thing.

"We cannot compete with the big teams in the same way," he continued. "Maybe it's fine the classic way, or maybe there's another, better way. We took another course and it works."

Certainly, after an accident-prone start to the 2018 season the team appears to be coming good. It's just moved up to fifth place in the constructors standings ahead of the likes of Force India, McLaren and Toro Rosso.

"Everything seems to be coming together a lot better than seasons before," Steiner agreed. "We didn't know how good our upgrade would work.

"We have less points than we should have, but it's our own doing. It's a little bit unlucky but the majority is our own doing. We try to get some of this back by working hard."

Driver Romain Grosjean has certainly been impressed by the way the team is being run.

"Since I met Gunther Steiner everything he's told me about the future has happened," said the French driver. "Everything Gunther told me since I spoke to him in September 2015 has actually happened, and that's quite impressive."

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