Haas short of a spare chassis for Australian GP weekend

©Haas

The Haas F1 team heads into the Australian Grand Prix weekend without a spare chassis as a result of Mick Schumacher's crash in Saudi Arabia last time out.

They young German's off in qualifying in Jeddah forced Haas to rebuild a new VF-22 from a spare tub, an arduous task that the team completed on Wednesday in Melbourne, the US outfit using one of its free curfews to do so.

However, with Schumacher's damaged chassis on its way back to Europe where it will undergo a thorough examination, Haas drivers are now left without a safety net for this weekend should anything go wrong on Friday o Saturday.

"The situation with spare parts is expected on race number two after a big crash," explained Haas team boss Guenther Steiner.

"We have everything, but we have no abundance of spare parts. The next question is how is the spare chassis? We haven’t got one because we have sent it back to Europe at the beginning of the week, so we’ll get it ready for Imola.

"We had to bring it here because of custom formalities, it had to enter here and then it could be shipped back to Europe from here and it’s on its way back now."

Although Haas' driver will be running without a safety net at Albert Park, Steiner doesn't believe it will change Schumacher of Kevin Magnussen's approach to their race weekend.

"I think we cannot approach differently," added the Italian. "The drivers are aware of the situation that there is no spare chassis but that can happen sometimes.

"I’m not too panicking and if something happens, we will deal with it as it comes along.

"You cannot say ‘go out there and drive slowly’, that doesn’t make sense as well, just like ‘don’t take extra risks if you don’t have to’."

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