Haas: More to lose then to gain from fixing Schumacher's car

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says it "didn't make sense" for the US outfit to fix Mick Schumacher's car for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and risk compromising the team's next race in Australia.

Schumacher emerged battered and bruised but otherwise unscathed from his heavy crash in Q2, in which his VF-22 came off the worse for wear.

While the 23-year-old was undergoing precautionary checks at a hospital in Jeddah, and with little chances of Schumacher scoring points in Sunday's event, Steiner made the wise call to withdraw his driver from Sunday's event and spare his team any further hardship in Jeddah or in two weeks' time in Melbourne.

"You could work all night and then find out you’ve compromised yourself so much because you did everything in a hurry," explained the Haas boss.

"Then you end up with not all the spare parts in Australia, and then you have a little thing [happen] in Australia, and then you cannot race when you in theory should be in a better position.

"It doesn't make sense to me. It's just like trying too hard to call it."

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Steiner also factored into his decision to withdraw Schumacher the fact that the team's freight will be heading straight to Australia after today's race, which ruled out an opportunity for the team to conduct a forensic check of the VF22's tub and elements back at its factory in Banbury.

"We cannot ship it to the UK now to do all the stuff on the car like you need, to crack check and all those other good things," said the Italian.

"It would be just not a good job for knowing that you cannot end up in the points if you start from the pitlane this year, as there's too many good teams out there.

"It's still difficult always to keep up [with spare parts], but we are glad to go to Melbourne with enough bits."

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