Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says the American newcomers are “as ready as you can be” ahead of their grand prix debut in Melbourne, but admits it would have liked to run more in pre-season testing.
While Haas enjoyed a fairly smooth first group session in Barcelona, it suffered a disjointed second week amid a series of hindrances that included a fuel system issue and problems with the turbo and brake-by-wire system.
As a result, Haas completed the fewest laps this winter with 474, i.e 10 less than second last Manor in the mileage rankings. Asked how ready F1’s newest entrants were before their maiden race weekend, Steiner replied:
“As ready as you can be! I don’t know what is waiting behind the corner. For sure, in the end, we would have liked to run more [last] Monday and Tuesday but we could not.
“We can never make it up, we did the best we could the last two days. We are as ready as we can get at the moment.”
Having already praised Haas’ quick turnaround amid troubles, Steiner admits there is still some fine-tuning to be done but remains impressed by how quickly the team has gelled together already.
“I was quite surprised how good they worked together here [in Barcelona]. You always need to do better because it’s still young. You can see sometimes in procedures we are a little bit slow. But that’s better to be slow and safe than do something stupid.”
ANALYSIS: The two F1 pre-season tests by the numbers
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