Despite a disappointing 2023 campaign, Haas team boss Guenther Steiner is optimistic about the US outfit’s prospects for 2024, boldly cliaming that it could even end up "top of the midfield" next season.
After an encouraging opening salvo, with Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg scoring three top-ten finishes in the first five races, Haas’ performance faltered.
Chronic tyre degradation issues conspired to undermine Magnussen and Hulkenberg’s efforts on race day, restricting the pair’s scoring to just 4 points in the remaining seventeen events, leaving Haas languishing in last position in F1’s Constructors’ standings at the end of the season.
While the expectation of Haas becoming "top of the midfield" seems ambitious considering the team's recent struggles, Steiner's confidence is rooted in the outfit’s commitment to improvement within the context of the sport’s budget cap.
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The team has already demonstrated its ability to produce competitive cars, and with the lessons learned in 2023 and the focus on development in 2024, Steiner feels there is reason to believe that Haas could indeed challenge for a more prominent position in the midfield next season.
“With the budget cap in place now, everything is possible,” Steiner told Sky Sports F1.
“AlphaTauri end of the season, McLaren beginning of the season, they didn’t start strong then at some stage they were the second fastest car out there, more than once. Everything is possible.
©Haas
“The big teams are always the big teams, for the next three to five years they will be always at the front, but the midfield… I don’t think there are top teams, midfield and backmarkers anymore.
“There are top teams and the rest in my opinion now because everybody is in a good place financially as a business [and] technically.
“We ended up last this year but we could end up in the top mid-field next year.”
Next year, Haas will continue to entrust its cars to Magnussen and Hulkenberg, its experienced Danish-German duo.
But after witnessing the remarkable performances this year of McLaren rookie Oscar Piastri, Steiner admitted that he could be tempted to hire a young promising talent once again in the future.
“For 2025, I think there’s a big opportunity for young drivers to come in,” commented the Italian.
“Because some of them, the drivers who are [on the grid] now maybe will stop doing it at the end of 2024, some of them would have not performed, nobody will pick them up.
“I might see a better opportunity taking a risk on a young driver than keeping somebody who didn’t perform.
“We had it in 2023 when Oscar Piastri came in. Before that everybody was unsure about rookies, he came in and was good straight away.
“So, we now see these things and say OK it worked with Piastri, why would it not work with somebody else?
“You have some history there now.”
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