Steiner: Haas maiden podium in 2019 only feasible with 'luck'

Haas team boss Guenther Steiner believes the US outfit will need "to get lucky" to secure its maiden F1 podium this season.

Haas heads into its fourth year of Grand Prix racing, but with opportunities for a spot among the top-three few and far between - thanks to the utter dominance of F1's unassailable Mercedes-Ferrari Red Bull trio - Steiner's troops can only "dream" for now of a podium finish.

"That is a dream. If we could make it that would be nice," said Steiner.

"I would say last year in Baku without the accident we could have got close to it. So hopefully it is our season. So last year luck was not a lot on our side.

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"Maybe it turns and we get lucky. But if everything goes normal nobody can reach the podium except for the top three teams.

"Sometimes there are things happening in a race where you can make it, and if you are there and about after the three big teams, you can pick it up.

"But you need to be there all the time. You need to be consistently in that fourth spot as a team to get to the podium."

Racing Point's Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll were the all-too-rare outliers that had the good fortune of sharing the podium with the big guns in the past two years, with both men achieving the feat at Baku.

The Mexican stood proud among the top-three in Azerbaijan last year, while the Canadian did the same with Williams in 2017.

Steiner righty states that F1 fans would love nothing more than to see an underdog upset the front-runner's race day.

But that prospect is unlikely to materialize without a leveling of the playing as induced by a long-awaited budget cap in F1.

"With a level playing field financially, if everyone can play with the same means, the same resources or a similar amount of money, it makes it more competitive with closer racing," Steiner told GPFans.

"After a while, just dominating, you know that you are just destroying something.

"I think we are just discussing small details [regarding the 2021 rules] now to get there but I think [all the teams] are on board.

"I think the big teams will still have an advantage anyway because their infrastructures are so much more developed, but their advantage will be smaller.

"What would be better than having an underdog winning a race? Like when Brawn won the championship, I think that was fantastic for the sport. I would like to see that, and I think the fans want to see that."

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