Steiner convinced Haas will be battling for points

Haas F1 Team principal Guenther Steiner insists that his team will be able to fight for points again next season once it introduces a new, competitive car.

The sport is introducing new rules and technical regulations for 2022 and Steiner says that what the team achieved with the existing VF-21 last week in Turkey shows that they should be able to quickly regain lost ground to their rivals.

With the team focused on next season, the current car has had little development leaving them stuck at the back of the grid for much of the year.

But Mick Schumacher's success in getting through to the second round of qualifying in Turkey on merit has given Steiner renewed hope that the team is still as strong and robust under the surface as it always has been.

• Read also: Schumacher 'never doubted' ability to perform in F1

"That was my personal greatest satisfaction, to see how the team executed [in Turkey]," Steiner responded when asked about Haas' race weekend management. ""Mick was very calm, his race engineer did a great job, always staying calm.

"Everything was done good, and it shows that you just have to keep on going, working hard, and things will come to us.

"They all did a good job. Everybody did what they needed to do, the mechanics," he added. "That's what made me happy, because now we are ready. If we'll get a better car [in 2022] the race team is ready to get some points.

"We are ready for next year, you know. We are fine. Yeah, we will make mistakes as well, but there was a chance there."

Unfortunately Schumacher was hit by Fernando Alonso on the opening lap of last week's race which put him out of any contention for points. But that didn't dampen Steiner's spirits looking back at the weekend as a whole.

"I'm very happy for the team to be honest, because they all work hard all the time to get everything out," he said. "I see what they are doing.

"There was no result in the end, and, you know, I almost feel bad about that, but I'm very happy for them because I know the effort they put into it."

Steiner was also pleased to see how well Nikita Mazepin did, especially given that the Russian rookie is currently being managed by Ayao Komatsu, the team's director of engineering and former race engineer for Romain Grosjean.

Steiner was certainly happy with the way that had worked out in Istanbul. "Especially having Ayao working as standing in for Nikita's race engineer, so there was no Chief Race Engineer there.

"It was working as they have worked together since three or five years," he added. Mazepin's regular race engineer Dominic Haines will also miss next week's race in the United States due to a "personal matter", but is expected to be back in time for Mexico.

The US-based Haas squad made its debut on the grid in 2016 with Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutiérrez as its full-time drivers. Kevin Magnussen took over alongside Grosjean the following season.

The team peaked in fifth place in the constructors standings in 2018 in just its third season of competition but fell back to ninth in following campaigns.

With a new all-rookie line-up looking to the future, Haas is currently in last place in this year's championship and is the only team yet to score any points in 2021.

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