Halfway through its debut season in the Formula One, the Haas F1 Team lies in eighth place in the constructors championship having slipped back from some of its eye-catching early points-paying successes at the start of the year.
However Guenther Steiner, team principal of Haas F1 Team, has insisted that the team isn't going backwards and remains very much a match in terms of performance with teams several places ahead of them in the standings such as Toro Rosso.
"[Germany] showed we are stronger than Toro Rosso," he told reporters this week. "We are not always stronger than Toro Rosso but on a good weekend we can be better than them.
"In my opinion that is an achievement," he insisted. "For us that’s pretty good in our first year of Formula One because Toro Rosso has been here a long time. We were very close to the McLarens, which isn’t bad."
After scoring three points in three of the first four Grand prix races of the season, Haas has found it difficult to maintain that form and only finished in the top ten again in Austria largely as a result of a series of reliability glitches.
"I think we started very good and always when you start very good the expectations get higher. We still have to not forget we are only 12 races in and there is no magic in this business.
"Is the car getting worse? No. Are we not clever enough to sort the problems? No. We have a good team of people," Steiner insisted. "We had an issue with the brakes [in Germany] which is no secret, a lot of the teams did, but I think we got on top of it.
"We had a problem with the cooling behind the car - when you are too long behind someone you get less cooling. It went away again when we got out in fresh air. It’s one of those things, this is hard for braking. I think Singapore will be hard, we will be on the limit.
"We still have some [new] parts for Singapore," he added. "A front wing, a floor and rear brake ducts. I hope they work, we developed them a few months ago and we'll try to make more points."
Scene at the German Grand Prix
Quotes of the week - German Grand Prix
Breakfast with ... Christian Danner
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