Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHaas F1 Team

Steiner happy with how Haas is coming together

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says that he's very happy with how the new Haas F1 Team is coming together ahead of its maiden season in Formula One.

The team had a solid start in their first official pre-season test last week, although some issues with the front wing, electronics and brake cooling quickly became apparent leaving Steiner admitting that the list of issues still to address and fix is pretty long.

But overall he felt that the team spirit was coming together nicely and would be a major asset as they face the final countdown for their début Grand Prix in Australia next month.

"I’m quite positively surprised by how quickly they gelled to work together," Steiner said. "The mechanics did a fantastic job, they got used to the car quick.

"We have experienced people, but not [experienced] on our car - this is the first time we’ve done it, so we didn’t really look at the lap times in itself.

"You can see the difference from day one to day four how much they improved: if they need to check something, how quick they are to take a floor off - we can measure it in time.

"But you just see when you look at them they are much more confident than they were on day one, and that is natural because we didn’t have a car three weeks ago. We learn on the job."

Steiner's positive view also extended to his assessment of the performances of the two drivers, Romain Grosjean and Esteban Guttierrez.

"I think they are very happy and I think they are very enthusiastic about what we are doing," he said. "They see that we are trying hard and it seems to go as smooth as it can go for a new team.

"The drivers have worked already with some of the engineers, so they know each other, it’s not like they’ve never met before so they know how to talk to with each other."

But Steiner was the first to admit that it's still very early days for the new US-based team.

"That is very encouraging, what we did [but] you always can do better," he said, adding that they successfully managed to get a lot more miles under their belt than they had expected this early in their programme. "That is very encouraging, what we did."

A closer look at the Haas VF-16

FEATURE: The first test in numbers

GALLERY: Pre-season testing

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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.