'Cautiously optimistic' Steiner eyes Haas comeback in 2022

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Haas F1 Team principal Guenther Steiner is cautiously optimistic that his squad will be able to mount a comeback next season after a recent slump in fortunes.

Haas is currently the only team to remain pointless in this year's constructors championship. That's in part due to the decision to focus research and development work on next year's car, as well as gambling on an all-rookie driver line-up.

“The ’22 car’s development is going well, we are making progress each wind tunnel session," Steiner told the official Formula1.com website this week.

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“I think we will be ready,” he continued. “You can always do better, but I think the other aspects of the team, they are in good shape I would say."

Haas first competed in Formula 1 in 2016, when it finished ahead of Renault, Sauber and Manor F1 in the standings. The squad peaked in fifth place in 2018 but then went into decline in 2019.

“We knew that this year would be a tough year," chief race engineer Ayao Komatsu commented earlier this year. "We had to stop our programme last year because of the pandemic and because the company was in quite a difficult situation.

"It’s not like we had a competitive car last year. So the thinking was, ‘Okay we have a big regulation change for ‘22; if we try to develop this year’s car we can improve performance but can we justify the impact on ‘22? Simply no."

“It’s a little bit like ’15 or ’16 to me," Steiner picked up, when asked what he felt the current situation was most like. "But to say how good we are, I have no idea, because I don’t know how good the other nine teams are.

In pursuit of that comeback, the team has made a number of personnel changes behind the scenes with Simone Resta brought in from Ferrari to take over as technical director while Haas has also invested in a new technical hub in Maranello.

"As a team we work now again like we did in ’15, ’16 and ’17, the technical team in Italy, and I’m cautiously optimistic that we will be in the midfield again next year.

"The race team is in good shape and there will be no big changes there," Steiner insisted. “I think we will be ready.

“There are still a lot of people from 2018 when we finished fifth in the championship, so these people are still good and they haven’t forgotten how to do this.

"I rely on these people and I am confident they can pull it off again, that we'll have good results. Maybe not fifth, but at least being back in the midfield like in ’16 and ’17.”

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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.