As US squad Haas begins its baptism of fire this weekend, team boss Guenther Steiner has steered the outfit to a conservative approach for its Grand Prix debut.
Haas acquitted itself fairly well during pre-season testing in Barcelona, enjoying adequate mileage although teething problems typical with any new effort deprived it from part of its extensive program.
Still, delivering two brand new cars to the Australian Grand Prix paddock was not a small accomplishment, hence the team's tightly managed approach.
"Since testing, the biggest thing was building the second car," Steiner explained.
"One car to go testing is one thing, but building a second car, all within a week, it wasn’t easy. The lessons we have taken is that we learned not to get too clever, get the second car ready for the race and keep working at it.
"We didn’t invent anything new, just the engineers looking at the data, studied everything, to come up with a set up for this first race."
While both Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez will be looking to race their car all the way to the checkered flag on Sunday, regardless of where they start, a point or two could be in the cards should favorable circumstances prevail.
"If all the stars aligned it’s realistic, but a lot of stars need to line up.
"After the test, because in the second week we wanted to do more set-up work and we haven’t done it, I am a little bit, conservative that we hit the right set up.
"The car is a good platform, but now we have to hit the right set up. The other people here are not stupid and they have done more work than us so they will improve.
"If we hit the set up right and we build some confidence it’s possible, but the stars need to line up."
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