F1 'seems like it's getting harder' - Haas

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Gene Haas says F1 "seems like it's getting harder" the longer his team's first season in the sport goes on.

Having entered into a close technical partnership with Ferrari and delayed its entry by a year, Haas started 2016 in impressive fashion with two top six finishes from the opening two races. Taking 18 points from those first two rounds, the team has only added a further 10 in the 10 races since, and Haas told F1i he feels there are less errors from others which his team can take advantage of.

"It seems like it’s getting harder," Haas said. "I think we had a lot of beginners luck there where we were able to capitalise on other people’s mistakes. They’re making less mistakes so we are not looking as strong as we did in the beginning. So now we have to get back to earning our points instead of having someone give it to us."

With a number of 11th places to its name this season, Haas believes his team needs to take more risks in terms of its race strategy in order to get the better of its closest rivals.

"Trying to strategise where we need to be, it’s a really tough competition. It seems like the back has come up and the front is farther out. So I think we need to kind of capitalise on other people’s mistakes.

"It’s kind of an eye-opener, you have to have a different kind of strategy if you’re going to try and beat your competition when everybody is so equal."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.