F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Haas needs to make its own luck - Steiner

Guenther Steiner says Haas needs to work harder to make its own luck after a double retirement in last weekend's Malaysian Grand Prix.

Romain Grosjean retired early on from a competitive tenth place with brake failure at the final corner, while Esteban Gutierrez then lost a wheel after a pit stop and was also forced to retire. Team principal Steiner says Haas has faced a number of issues outside of its control this season but believes the team can find ways of reducing those problems itself.

"It's difficult to say we're unlucky because that sounds like an excuse, because you make your own luck in life," Steiner said. "But I think there are a lot of things happened which are out of our control and we just try and get them together, like Romain in Singapore when he did 11 laps in the race - what can you do? It's just one after another.

"[In Malaysia] we started off not finding a balance in the car, and then to find the balance and we're pretty happy. The race is going as it should go. Esteban obviously had a puncture on the first corner because [Kevin] Magnussen ran into him and punctured him, but with Romain we were in a good position, everything was well under control and our strategy was right what we wanted to do - and then the disc breaks. You can call it unlucky but it's still our fault, you know."

Asked if he is disappointed to still be having so many problems late in the team's first season, Steiner replied: "We are not still having them, we are having them because we didn't have them before.

"That is the thing, that is what it is. It's not disappointing, we just need to keep on dealing with them. We are grown-ups, it happens all the time, you show how strong you are when you're down in the dumps to come out of it. We normally dig our way out, we work hard to get our way out. If on Friday [in Malaysia] somebody had said that Haas would end up 12th and 13th in qualifying then a lot of people would have laughed about it, but we got it done because we kept on working.

"The only thing to get out of this stuff is to keep on working. This is no miracle: we can say we're unlucky but you make your own luck and you get lucky if you work hard. These things happen, analyse what it was and prevent it from happening again - and never give up."

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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.