Haas determined to fight on in 'tense' midfield battle

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The Haas F1 Team might have lost its appeal over driver Romain Grosjean's exclusion from the results of the Italian Grand Prix, but it's not giving up its fight to come out on top in the hard-fought midfield battle.

The FIA's ruling over Monza leaves Haas in fifth place in the constructors championship with two races remaining in 2018. It is 30 points behind Renault, but enjoys a 22 point lead over McLaren in sixth.

"It’s very tense in the midfield," admitted team principal Guenther Steiner. "I think it’s a very interesting battle.

"I would always like to be on top of the battle, but it changes all the time, and you’re really focused on that one during every practice, qualifying and race to see how close you are to your nearest competitor."

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Meanwhile Grosjean admitted that Haas had gone through a bit of a lean spell in recent weeks, having failed to score points in the last two races.

"We lost a bit of ground at our home Grand Prix and in Mexico, which is a shame. We’re trying to make up for it, and we’ll be giving it 100 per cent."

He added that the squad certainly wasn't giving up its efforts in the 2018 championship. "It’s got a big significance for us. Fourth or fifth would be a big achievement for Haas F1 Team in its third season of competition."

His team mate Kevin Magnussen was also focussed on a strong end to the season, having finished in the points only once since Spa.

"The midfield fight is still intense, although the gap to Renault has increased," said the Dane. "We shouldn’t really be fighting Renault in Formula 1 because they have a lot more resources - a big factory and a lot more people involved.

"With what we’ve got, we use it a lot better than they do. That’s already something to be proud of," he said. "On average, we’ve been quicker than them this year so, of course, it’s disappointing to be behind them in the championship at this point.

"We’re still really keen to try and catch up, and we’ll do everything we can to maximize our chances against them," Magnussen added. "It’s the ‘best of the rest’, so there’s a lot of pride in it

"We’ve taken a step forward this year and we’ve proved that we can build a car that’s capable of best-of-the-rest. We just have to minimize the mistakes, score points and get the results we deserve to have more points regularly.”

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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.