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Haas keen to use relationship to help Ferrari improve

Haas is keen to help Ferrari improve by using its close technical partnership, after the Scuderia endured a more difficult 2016 than anticipated.

Ferrari entered this season targeting an improvement on its 2015 performance where it won three races and finished runner-up to Mercedes in the constructor's championship. However, a tough year followed as Red Bull became the nearest Mercedes challenger and Ferrari failed to win a race.

Haas entered F1 off the back of a technical partnership with Ferrari and team principal Guenther Steiner believes such a tie-up should be used to improve the performance of both teams.

Asked if Ferrari's relative struggles in 2016 could hit Haas due to their close relationship, Steiner replied: "It can but if you have a partnership with Ferrari you must trust that they will do a good job.

"[Haas must] go through with them about being positive with your input on what can be done better. For them it is pretty good to have us as a customer as we are actually user-friendly and if we discuss it with them we will try to move forward together.

"If, say, the engine broke therefore we retired, we don’t use it as an excuse we put the trust in them and help. Without them we would never be where we are now. You have to give to take.

"Yes there may have been some issues this year and there might be some more next year but we wouldn’t be where we are without them. It is easy to say what went wrong but where would we be without them."

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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.