Gunther Steiner has revealed that Haas suffered a power failure in its garage during the British Grand Prix, thus further compromising what already was a tough race.
Having qualified a solid 12th and 13th, Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez were optimistic of another points-scoring challenge at Silverstone. Things started to unravel when the American team pitted both drivers at the same time as soon as the initial Safety Car period ended.
Grosjean’s hopes a second consecutive top-10 result were dashed on lap 17 with a transmission problem. Meanwhile, Gutierrez, who had been delayed at the first stop, lost further ground when Haas’ garage mishap affected his strategy.
“It was a no-no race for us, starting with the double pit stop where we went from wets to intermediates, which we should not have done,” Steiner said.
“Then we had a problem with our electricity, everything went down. We had no data, nothing available for the engineers anymore for five laps because everything went down.
“The panic that happens then means you don’t concentrate on the cars anymore, you try to fix things to get your telemetry back.
“We lost a bit of time there because Esteban came a lap late for dry tyres, it was around that period. We could not speak to him, we did not have the GPS anymore so we did not know where he was so the call came late.
“Plus we had the transmission failure for Romain. All together, you end up 16th and with one car not finishing.”
Steiner adds that tough race weekends like the one Haas endured at Silverstone are part of the learning curve, and does not think the team lost a good chance to amass a strong points haul in unpredictable conditions.
“Every challenge like this weather is an opportunity but can also be a negative. It’s not like somebody else took advantage of the conditions today. No underdog was in there, it was the normal people.
“These difficult days, we knew they will happen. It’s never nice when they happen but you learn out of mistakes. You can do a lot through experience but some things you need to learn and to make it better. It was a tough race for a lot of people but here we go, we get ready for Hungary and try to do better there.”
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